The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has warned that the risk of cyber-attacks orchestrated by criminals using artificial intelligence (AI) remains high, even as the number of attacks targeting Kenya has surged more than fivefold in the past year. warned that it was on the rise.
According to data from the CA, the National Kenya Computer Incident Response Team Coordination Center (National KE-CIRT/CC) has reported that between January and March, the National Kenya Computer Incident Response Team Coordination Center (KE-CIRT/CC) reported 971.44 million incidents between January and March, targeting national institutions, internet and cloud service providers, and academic institutions, among others. 345 cyber attacks were detected.
This is a five-fold increase compared to the 187,757,659 cyber threats the agency detected during the same period last year, and shows an alarming trend of increasing attacks as the economy becomes more digital. There is.
However, CA has shown that cybercriminals are rapidly deploying AI to carry out attacks, expand social engineering efforts, spread malware, conduct adversarial attacks, and attack critical information infrastructure and the Internet of Things ( IoT) devices have been compromised.
“AI-powered attacks are more complex, bypassing traditional security measures and exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities through techniques such as advanced social engineering techniques. These attacks include deepfakes impersonating executives. phishing emails and creating more highly personalized phishing emails, making them harder to detect,” the CA said.
AI is also being used to automate cyberattack tasks, allowing criminals to quickly identify targets, deploy malware, and execute data exfiltration attacks quickly and broadly. I am adding.
“AI is being leveraged to develop new types of malware that can learn and adapt to security defenses, including techniques such as self-replication and mutation, making them difficult to contain and eradicate,” CA said. is warning.
The regulator adds that criminals are developing adversarial AI to target and defeat other AI-powered security systems.
Ninety percent of the cyberattacks detected in the quarter were system attacks, with the remainder including distributed denial-of-service attacks, malware, brute force attacks, and web and mobile application attacks.
“The continued exploitation of 'system vulnerabilities' is also consistent with global trends, with the adoption and use of inherently insecure Internet of Things devices rapidly increasing globally,” the report said. It is related to.”
