Artificial Intelligence-driven cyber-attacks to go up, says expert

Artificial Intelligence-driven cyber-attacks to go up, says expert

Cyber criminals are poised to step up their attacks on the millions of devices now connected to the Internet of Things both in offices and homes.

Hyderabad: Cyber criminals caused major service disruptions around the world this year using their increasing technical proficiency to break through cyber defenses. In 2018, the trend will become more pronounced as these attackers will use machine learning and artificial intelligence to launch even more potent attacks.

Incidents like the WannaCry attack, which impacted more than 200,000 computers worldwide in May, are just the warmup to a new year of more virulent malware and denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Meanwhile, cyber criminals are poised to step up their attacks on the millions of devices now connected to the Internet of Things both in offices and homes.

Tarun Kaura, director, Product Management, APJ, Symantec, says, “The cybersecurity landscape in 2018 is sure to surprise us in ways that we never imagined.”

He adds further, as 2017 draws to a close, one can expect that blockchain will find use outside of cryptocurrencies but cyber criminals will focus on coins and exchanges, cyber criminals will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML) to conduct attacks, supply chain attacks will become mainstream, file-less and file-light malware will explode, organisations will still struggle with Security-as-a-Service (SaaS) Security and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Security, and more breaches due to error, compromise & design will take place.

Financial trojans will still account for more losses than ransomware, expensive home devices will be held to ransom, IoT Devices will be hijacked and used in DDoS attacks and IoT devices will provide persistent access to home networks, he added.