· ai-devtools
UK faces ‘unprecedented rise’ in cyberattacks in coming months, warns cyber chief
Britain faces the “real prospect of an unprecedented rise in the number of cyber incidents” in the coming months, the head of the country’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) will warn Tuesday.
Launching the agency’s annual report, NCSC Chief Executive Richard Horne will warn that the risk is “not because AI has invented new ways to attack us,” but “because vulnerabilities that have been tolerated for far too long can now be discovered and exploited at a scale that was once unimaginable.” The warning follows an alert issued in June by the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which said AI would fundamentally transform both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.
“The timeline is not years, it is months,” it said at the time. Officials point to the surging levels of vulnerabilities being uncovered by vendors as evidence this transformation is underway.
They warn the change is accelerating, even if experts have not yet observed a corresponding rise in exploitation. “Major technology providers are now fixing hundreds of vulnerabilities in a single update … and the Linux kernel project alone patched more than a thousand vulnerabilities last month,” Horne will say, adding that AI “is enabling vulnerabilities to be found and fixed faster than ever.” The risk from attackers deploying the technology remains significant.
