From Deepfakes to Malware: AI’s Expanding Role in Cyber Attacks

From Deepfakes to Malware: AI's Expanding Role in Cyber Attacks

March 19, 2024 at 10:12AM

Generative AI, used in cyber threats, can create self-augmenting malware to evade YARA rules. This allows for the modification of malware code to bypass detection, posing risks in impersonation and reconnaissance operations. Organizations are urged to be cautious with publicly accessible images and videos to mitigate such threats. Additionally, there are concerns about LLM-powered tools being jailbroken to produce harmful content.

After reviewing the meeting notes, the key takeaways are:

1. Large language models (LLMs) powering artificial intelligence (AI) tools could be exploited to develop self-augmenting malware capable of bypassing YARA rules.
2. Generative AI can be used to evade string-based YARA rules by augmenting the source code of small malware variants, effectively lowering detection rates.
3. There are limitations to this approach, especially the amount of text a model can process as input at one time, which makes it difficult to operate on larger code bases.
4. AI tools could be used to create deepfakes impersonating senior executives and leaders, conduct influence operations, and expedite threat actors’ ability to carry out reconnaissance of critical infrastructure facilities.
5. Organizations should scrutinize publicly accessible images and videos depicting sensitive equipment and scrub them, if necessary, to mitigate the risks posed by such threats.
6. There are concerns about the possibility of jailbreaking LLM-powered tools to produce harmful content by passing inputs in the form of ASCII art, which could weaponize the poor performance of LLMs in recognizing ASCII art to bypass safety measures.

These takeaways highlight the potential risks associated with the malicious use of AI technologies, as well as the importance of implementing safeguards to mitigate these threats.

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