AI-enabled agentic ransomware will gain initial access, analyse the environment, determine how to maximise malicious hacker profits, and implement attacks.
Agentic AI ransomware will become a new threat in the near future, as AI is used for faster and more effective attacks.
According to KnowBe4, AI agentic ransomware is a collection of AI bots that perform all the steps necessary to conduct a successful ransomware attack, only faster and better.
The AI-enabled agentic ransomware will gain initial access, analyse the environment, determine how to maximise malicious hacker profits, and implement the attacks: and a series of escalating attacks will also provide a healthy profit for the attacker.
“We have already seen how AI has been used in hacking for a few years now and the near-term future is best predicted by past behaviour,” said Roger Grimes, data-driven defence evangelist at KnowBe4.
“History shows that the bad actors follow about six to 12 months behind what the good actors invent and discover. It takes that long for the bad actors to learn what the good actors developed and then figure out not only how to use it maliciously, but place it into existing hacker tools and kits so a broad range of hackers can use them. Now is the time to start using agentic AI in cybersecurity defences – before it becomes a true threat.”
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
