In the relentless cat-and-mouse game of cybersecurity, a new, game-changing player has entered the field: artificial intelligence (AI). For years, we’ve heralded AI as a revolutionary tool for defense, capable of identifying threats at machine speed. Will AI make hackers smarter? The short answer is a resounding and unsettling—it might. But it’s not just about making them smarter; it’s about making them faster, more efficient, and dangerously scalable. 

This article delves into the unsettling world of artificial intelligence hacking, exploring precisely how threat actors are weaponizing AI, the new generation of cyberattacks on the horizon, and what we must do to prepare for this shift in digital security.

What are AI attacks?

AI-enabled cybercrime refers to any criminal activity in the digital space in which attackers use artificial intelligence—including machine learning, large language models, and automation—to plan, execute, or enhance their operations.

The threats unlocked by AI hacking aren’t a single danger but rather a wide spectrum of challenges. On one end, we have high-volume, automated attacks that have been enhanced by AI, such as hyper-realistic phishing campaigns that can trick even the most discerning eye. On the other end, we see more sophisticated, highly targeted operations. These are no longer far-off concepts from a sci-fi movie; these methods are being developed and deployed right now. Recognizing this full spectrum of AI-driven hacking is essential to building a layered, intelligent, and truly comprehensive defense for our digital lives.

How AI empowers attackers

Artificial intelligence acts as a powerful force multiplier, empowering cybercriminals across all skill levels. For novice attackers, AI dramatically lowers the barrier to entry, using user-friendly malicious AI tools from the dark web, like WormGPT, to gain sophisticated capabilities. Access to such tools enables them to create malware or craft convincing phishing emails, tasks that once demanded significant technical expertise.

For elite, state-sponsored hacking groups, AI automates the laborious and time-consuming phases of an attack, such as reconnaissance and vulnerability scanning. This frees up their human experts to concentrate on what they do best: developing creative infiltration strategies and navigating complex, high-value targets. 

The impact of AI on cybersecurity

Take these statistics:

These numbers paint a clear picture: AI is rapidly transforming the cyber threat landscape. The staggering $4.88 million average cost of a data breach underscores the severe financial consequences of a successful attack. The 200% increase in dark web discussions about malicious AI tools shows that criminals are actively adopting and refining these technologies.

In addition, we are seeing the rise of malware-as-a-service and fraud-as-a-service platforms where dark web developers are creating, packaging, and selling AI-powered tools like WormGPT and FraudGPT. These large language models trained on illicit data, stripped of ethical safeguards to help aspiring criminals write malicious code, craft convincing scam emails, and find exploitable vulnerabilities. 

These trends confirm that the AI arms race is well underway, making robust, AI-powered protection more critical than ever.

Does AI make hackers smarter?

The truth is, while AI gives hackers the ability to broaden their target audience, mass produce scam messages, or expedite their distribution, it doesn’t necessarily increase their raw intelligence or creativity. AI does, however, act as an unprecedented force multiplier, amplifying their existing skills in three key ways.

Increased scale and speed

A brilliant human hacker is still limited by time. They can only analyze one system, write one piece of code, or craft one email at a time. AI removes this limitation by enabling hackers to scan thousands of networks simultaneously, generate a million unique phishing emails in an hour, and test billions of password combinations overnight. The genius of the attack comes from the AI’s ability to process information and execute tasks at a scale and speed that is simply beyond human capability.

Lower the barrier to entry

Historically, launching a sophisticated cyberattack required deep technical expertise in programming, networking, and security systems. AI demolishes this natural barrier. With tools like WormGPT, an amateur scammer with very little coding knowledge can now generate functional malware or create a deepfake voice clone with a simple-to-use app. In this sense, AI makes the overall pool of potential attackers far more capable and dangerous.

Automation frees up creativity

AI’s greatest advantage is automation, freeing hackers from the tedious, time-consuming tasks of reconnaissance and initial access. Instead of hackers spending weeks looking for a way in, AI does the grunt work where it autonomously finds a system’s weak points and exploits the existing code to build a functional, malicious structure without direct human intervention. This allows the human hackers to focus on navigating complex internal networks, disabling high-end security systems, and devising novel ways to achieve their ultimate objective.

Key characteristics of AI-powered attacks

AI-powered cyberattacks are defined by several characteristics that set them apart from traditional, human-driven methods. Here are some of these characteristics:

  • Hyper-automated. Unlike traditional cybercrime, which typically relies on manually written code and human-driven schemes, AI-enabled cybercrimes use machine learning, large language models, and automation to plan, execute, and/or enhance their operations. These tools execute tasks 24/7 at a speed impossible for humans.
  • High volume: In traditional attacks, a cybercriminal might spend hours crafting a phishing email or days scanning for vulnerabilities. In AI-enabled attacks, a machine learning model can generate thousands or millions of realistic, personalized phishing emails in seconds or sweep networks for security flaws at unprecedented speed and volume.
  • Adaptive: Unlike traditional malware that follows a fixed script, AI-powered threats can learn and adapt. An AI-driven attack can analyze a system’s security defense, then modify its own code or behavior in real time to find a way around it.
  • Stealthy: By automating tasks and mimicking human behavior with incredible accuracy, these attacks can often go unnoticed by conventional security systems that look for known, static threats. This makes it exceptionally difficult to detect and block with conventional methods.
  • Highly personalized: AI has transformed social engineering by scraping data from social media and other public sources, then crafting highly personalized phishing emails and texts, or deepfake audio that is incredibly convincing. These messages reference specific details about a person’s life or work to build trust.

AI amplifies cyber attacks

With these characteristics, AI is supercharging every stage of the attack lifecycle, from reconnaissance to execution and evasion. To truly grasp the impact of AI on cybercrime, let’s look at the ways in which hackers repurpose AI for malicious intent. 

Automated vulnerability discovery and exploitation

Through some techniques, AI dramatically accelerates the hacker’s time-consuming task of finding a chink in a target’s armor. Some of these methods include:

  • AI-powered fuzzing: Here, random or semi-random data is fed into a program to see if it crashes or behaves unexpectedly, revealing potential vulnerabilities. AI then generates more effective inputs to find obscure bugs faster than traditional methods.
  • Code analysis at scale: A hacker can use AI to scan an entire application’s source code in minutes, highlighting weak points that would take a human analyst days or weeks to find.

Hyper-personalized social engineering

The most immediate danger of AI in hacking lies in its ability to exploit human trust. This AI-powered social engineering has moved into a new realm of hyper-personalization and deception by analyzing a target’s public social media posts, professional history, and online activity, then drafting phishing emails that are contextually indistinguishable from legitimate communication. 

AI-driven malware and evasive code

Antivirus software and security systems primarily work by identifying patterns of malicious code or malware called signatures. AI allows malware to become polymorphic, which means it can change its code with every new infection using a variable encryption key to evade signature-based detection. Metamorphic malware is even more advanced, completely rewriting its underlying logic while preserving its malicious function. Solutions like McAfee focus on identifying suspicious behavior rather than just looking for a known signature, providing a necessary countermeasure to these evolving threats.

Deepfake AI hacking

Deepfake AI hacking refers to the malicious use of artificial intelligence to create highly realistic, yet fabricated, audio and video content. These synthetic media can convincingly impersonate individuals, manipulating voices and appearances to spread misinformation, commit identity theft or fraud, or undermine trust. 

→ Related: How to Spot a Deepfake on Social Media

Voice cloning for vishing and impersonation scams

One of the most alarming uses of AI is in voice cloning or voice phishing, also called vishing. With only a few seconds of a person’s audio—often scraped from social media videos or public voicemails—AI can create a highly realistic clone of their voice. In the corporate world, a scammer can use even a short sound byte from a CEO’s public interview to clone their voice, then exploit the fake audio and instruct the finance department to complete a fraudulent wire transfer.

Cracking passwords at unprecedented speeds

By analyzing massive datasets of breached passwords, AI models can learn the common patterns, substitutions, and structures humans use when creating passwords. Instead of trying aaaa and aaab, an AI-powered cracker might start with Password2024! or Winter!23—learning from context and human psychology. This dramatically reduces the time needed to compromise an account.

→ Related: Weak Passwords Can Cost You Everything

Brute force attacks

In traditional brute force attacks, the attacker tries multiple combinations of usernames and passwords until they find the correct one. With AI, machine learning is leveraged to significantly optimize credential guessing, coming up with millions, if not billions, of combinations per second to systematically enter usernames and passwords until they successfully gain access to a system. 

CAPTCHA cracking

AI CAPTCHA cracking utilizes an automated deep learning or algorithm-based solution to bypass CAPTCHA challenges, designed to distinguish humans from bots. This presents a growing security concern, as AI models become highly effective at solving even complex visual or audio CAPTCHAs. 

Adversarial AI attacks

In this method, hackers attack the AI systems that organizations rely on for security. Two common ways this is done are by:

  • Model poisoning: This involves subtly corrupting the data used to train a company’s AI model. For example, a hacker could feed a facial recognition security system with thousands of mislabeled images of someone’s face. Later, that individual could walk past the cameras completely undetected. Similarly, they could poison a spam filter’s training data to ensure their phishing emails are always marked as safe.
  • Evasion attacks: Hackers attempt to manipulate an AI model by making tiny, almost-imperceptible alterations to an image to cause an AI to misidentify, for example, a stop sign as a speed limit sign—a terrifying prospect for autonomous vehicles. In cybersecurity, this could mean altering a piece of malware to make it invisible to an AI-based threat detection system.

Autonomous attack swarms

Autonomous hacking agents, sometimes called AI swarms, are intelligent systems that can conduct an entire cyberattack campaign without any direct human intervention. An agent is programmed with a goal—such as steal customer data from Company X—and it will independently execute the kill chain in minutes, 24/7, from reconnaissance, identify vulnerabilities, execute the breach, and extract the data. The system only alerts the human hacker once the objective is complete. 

Related: ChatGPT: A Scammer’s Newest Tool

Navigating the new threat landscape

The clash between malicious and defensive AI has ignited a new technological arms race in cybersecurity. While hackers are weaponizing AI to create more evasive and scalable attacks, the global security defenders are also leveraging AI to build smarter, faster, and more predictive security systems. 

The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence hacking can seem daunting, but you are not defenseless. You are an active and essential participant in your own digital safety. It simply demands a smarter, more modern approach to security. Seeing the full picture and having knowledge of hacker AI-driven methods set the stage for defensive strategies that can keep you confidently secure.

Think of your awareness as a powerful sensor that AI cannot replicate. Every time you pause to question a suspicious email or verify an urgent request, you are playing a vital role. As your partner, McAfee provides the tools and insights you need. With your informed intuition and our intelligent technology, we can create a formidable defense and confidently navigate the digital world.

Practical steps to mitigate AI cyberattacks

  • Strengthen your logins: Use a password manager to create and store long, unique, and complex passwords for every account. More importantly, enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) wherever possible as a powerful barrier against compromise.
  • Scrutinize communications: Be extra vigilant with emails, texts, and voice calls that create a sense of urgency. Verify unexpected requests through a separate, trusted channel before acting.
  • Keep everything updated: Regularly update your operating system, web browser, and applications. These updates often contain critical security patches that close vulnerabilities exploited by hackers.
  • Deploy AI-powered defenses: The most effective way to fight AI-driven threats is with an AI-driven defense. Use a comprehensive security solution like McAfee that leverages artificial intelligence to detect and block sophisticated attacks in real time.

The duality of AI: Sword and shield

Artificial intelligence is truly a double-edged sword in the world of cybersecurity. The very same capabilities that make it a potent weapon for hackers—unprecedented speed, pattern recognition, and automation—also make it our most essential shield. An AI model that can be trained to write a convincing phishing email can also be trained to recognize the subtle linguistic patterns of one. An AI that can find and exploit a vulnerability can also be used to fix and protect those vulnerabilities. 

Moving forward, the future of AI in cybercrime points toward greater autonomy and accessibility. Expect to see more autonomous attack swarms, where multiple AI agents work together to execute a breach without human guidance. Furthermore, the commercialization of AI hacking tools on the dark web will continue, making sophisticated attack capabilities available to more criminals. 

The future isn’t all grim, however. Defensive AI is evolving just as rapidly. As attackers get smarter, so do our protections, and companies like McAfee are at the forefront of developing the next generation of AI-powered security to neutralize these future threats.

Final thoughts

The era of artificial intelligence hacking is not on the horizon; it is here. AI has granted hackers superhuman speed, automated complex tasks, and lowered the barrier to entry. We are seeing its impact in the rise of hyper-realistic phishing, adaptive malware, and the commercialization of malicious AI tools.

The same AI that can be used for offense provides our most promising path for defense. McAfee Smart AI technology is built on a foundation of deep learning, contextual analysis, and behavioral modeling, continuously processing trillions of threat signals to deliver real-time protection, such as scam and deepfake detection, as well as antivirus solutions. With visibility across devices, apps, and the web, it proactively identifies and blocks malicious activity before it can do any harm. Whether it’s stopping phishing attempts, detecting zero-day malware, or identifying unusual behaviors, McAfee Smart AI is engineered to think ahead of cybercriminals and keep you secure at every digital touchpoint.

By staying informed, fostering a culture of cybersecurity awareness, and investing in next-generation, AI-powered security tools, you have the power to stand against potential risks and disinformation.