Trend Micro's 2024 cybersecurity predictions warn of the transformative role of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the cyber threat landscape, as well as a new wave of sophisticated social engineering tactics and identity theft using AI-powered tools .
The widespread availability and improved quality of generative AI combined with Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to generate realistic photo, audio and video content will have a lasting impact on the phishing landscape in 2024. Trend Micro predicts a new wave of Business Email Compromise (BEC ), virtual kidnapping and other scams – triggered by the cost-effective creation of such content.
Cyber gangsters are raking in billions of dollars
In view of lucrative profit prospects (According to the FBI, $2,7 billion from BCE). For such campaigns, threat actors either use legitimate AI tools with stolen credentials and VPNs to hide their identities or develop malicious generative AI tools specifically. But AI models themselves will also come under fire in 2024: While the data sets of generative AI and LLMs (Large Language Models) are difficult for threat actors to influence, specialized cloud-based machine learning models represent an attractive target. They will be used with more specific data sets trained and can fall victim to data poisoning attacks - from exfiltrating sensitive data to disrupting fraud filters and even influencing connected vehicles. Such attacks already cost actors less than $100.
“Advanced LLMs who are proficient in any language pose a significant threat because they avoid previously common indicators of phishing attacks, such as unusual formatting or grammatical errors. This makes it more difficult to detect such attacks,” reports Udo Schneider, IoT Security Evangelist Europe at Trend Micro. “Companies must therefore adapt their previous phishing training and also introduce modern technical protective measures. Advanced defense mechanisms not only exceed human detection capabilities, but also ensure resilience against these attack tactics.”
Government AI guidelines take too long
Such security developments can, in turn, lead to increased scrutiny from regulators and also prompt the technology industry to take matters into its own hands: “In the coming year, the cyber industry will overtake legislators in developing cybersecurity-specific AI guidelines . The industry is moving quickly towards voluntary self-regulation,” continued Udo Schneider.
The Japanese security expert Trend Micro also names further developments that IT security managers should pay particular attention to in 2024:
- An increase in cloud-native worm attacks, which target vulnerabilities and misconfigurations and use a high level of automation to compromise containers, accounts and services with minimal effort.
- Cloud security will be critical for organizations to address security gaps in cloud environments. It is worth emphasizing the vulnerability of cloud-native applications to automated attacks. Proactive measures, including robust defenses and thorough security audits, are essential to mitigate risks.
- Attacks on private blockchains are increasing due to vulnerabilities in the implementation of a number of private blockchains. Threat actors could use access rights to modify, disable, or delete entries and then demand a ransom. Alternatively, if they manage to gain control of enough nodes, they could encrypt the entire blockchain.
- Increasing supply chain attacks not only target open source software components within them, but also identity management tools such as Telco SIMs, which are crucial for fleet and inventory systems. Cybercriminals also exploit vendors' software supply chains via CI/CD systems, with a particular focus on third-party components.
Supply chain security also plays an important role in the new European NIS2 directive, which will concern affected companies in the coming year, as Richard Werner, Business Consultant at Trend Micro explains:
Important NIS2 directive is coming
“As soon as NIS2 has been implemented into national law – by October 2024 at the latest – there will initially be a ‘knock and shove’ as to who falls under it. Companies will initially try to evade stricter regulation. However, the obligation of those affected to include their supply chains will have the opposite effect, particularly for suppliers and logisticians. They will align their IT security architectures with the new requirements in order to be able to offer their customers a specific advantage in international competition. On the one hand, it is sad that we first need new legal requirements to make the danger of supply chain attacks clear. On the other hand, however, it is positive to see that the legislature is responding to a clear threat with clear rules.”
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