What are the current AI threats in practice? The answer is definitely more than none – and they are improving.
22 Apr 2025
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3 min. read
It was virtually inevitable – advanced technology turning rogue was destined to be directed towards unsuspecting targets, following a prolonged existence in the grey area between righteousness and malevolence, representing the paradox where beneficial technology can be repurposed with sinister intentions. This is how they go about it.
Many headline-grabbing advanced AI models possess ethical constraints against malicious actions, serving as the digital equivalence of the Hippocratic Oath to “First, do no harm.” While these models are directed to abstain from providing detailed instructions on constructing weapons, they are adept at guiding users towards formulating better queries to circumvent these limitations.
Despite the prohibition on discussing weapon construction directly, it is still possible to refine questioning techniques, employing an array of tools, to eventually reach the desired answer.
One effective strategy is to programmatically interface via API queries. Some recent initiatives have concentrated on directing the backend API of an AI model towards gaining root access on servers. Another approach involves harnessing the ChatGPT backend for intelligently identifying potential targets for future attacks.
Integrating AI-driven tools alongside a mix of other solutions aimed at addressing various challenges, like deciphering obfuscated IPs to pinpoint the actual target server, can yield potent results, particularly as automation plays a more significant role.
In the digital realm, these methodologies can be amalgamated to create comprehensive tools that detect vulnerabilities, subsequently iterate against potential exploits, without alerting the individual AI models involved.
This approach is akin to a “clean room design,” where an AI model is tasked with resolving a smaller fragment of a larger objective defined by an attacker, culminating in the integration of various components to craft the final weapon.
From a legal standpoint, diverse organizations are striving to establish effective barriers to impede these underhanded tactics or impose penalties on AI models complicit to a certain extent. Nonetheless, apportioning specific levels of accountability will be a formidable challenge, especially in terms of legal evidentiary requirements.
Exploring new avenues
AI models can scour through billions of lines of code existing in software repositories to identify insecure patterns and develop digital assets that can be deployed against a plethora of devices globally running vulnerable software. This approach opens up new potential targets for compromise, bolstering the arsenal of those aiming to initiate zero-day attacks.
It’s conceivable that nation-states may intensify these efforts – pre-emptively weaponizing software vulnerabilities using AI. This defensive posture places cybersecurity practitioners at a disadvantage, prompting a scenario of escalating AI-driven defense mechanisms that veers towards a slightly dystopian trajectory. Defenders will have to fortify their defenses by integrating AI-driven strategies to safeguard against breaches or infiltration attempts. Let’s hope they are up to the challenge.
Even contemporary publicly available AI models can analyze complex problems effortlessly, contemplating them methodically in a thought-chain pattern reminiscent of human thought processes (during lucid intervals). While the technology is far from evolving into a sentient collaborator (in illicit activities) in the near future, having assimilated a copious amount of data from the internet, one could argue that it possesses a profound understanding of its subject matter – and can be manipulated into divulging its confidential insights.
Moreover, it will continue to enhance its capabilities significantly, possibly dispensing with excessive supervision, empowering individuals devoid of moral inhibitions to operate at a level exceeding their customary capacity, and allowing resourceful actors to operate on an unprecedented scale. Reports indicate that early indications of impending developments have been evident in red team exercises or even encountered in real-world scenarios.
One thing is certain: the rate of intelligence-fueled attacks will rise. Upon the release of an exploitable CVE or the introduction of a novel technique, swift thinking will be paramount – readiness is key.
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