Impending Wave of AI-powered Ransomware Attacks

Are we facing an impending wave of ransomware attacks fueled by advances in artificial intelligence? In?this article?by Kyle Allspach that appears in Protocol, the answer is yes.?The article posits that ransomware groups have increasing ability to access expertise in penetration testing and artificial intelligence. Presently, many attacks have to be tailored by a human to a particular target. Artificial intelligence could enable attackers?to automate some of the most labor-intensive aspects of targeted ransomware and create a ransomware scourge on a scale that is much worse than what we have seen before.?

For my part, I worry that if ransomware groups learn to effectively deploy artificial intelligence to fuel their attacks, it could be used to shorten the time between the discovery of critical vulnerabilities in software and hardware and the widespread use of exploits that target those vulnerabilities. The result would force us to massively rethink the way we manage vulnerabilities.

In any event, we should all be revisiting the security practices and technologies that help us prevent and respond to ransomware attacks because there seems to be no reason to believe the threat of ransomware will let up anytime soon.