UPDATE: After publication of this article, the FBI’s National Press Office said in a statement that “Mr. Hemmen discussed the FBI’s hypothetical application of AI technology in the context of the positive and negative consequences that would result from the development of the technology.” For clarity, 404 Media has updated the headline and included the FBI’s full statement below, but left the original article intact so readers can see the comments from the meeting. An FBI spokesperson told 404 Media, “Hemen DAD was discussing hypothetical applications of AI technology by the FBI in the context of positive and negative consequences that would result from the development of the technology. “All FBI operations are conducted in accordance with the Constitution, applicable statutes, executive orders, Department of Justice regulations and policies, and guidelines from the Attorney General.”
FBI officials say the agency is using artificial intelligence to carry out what the FBI calls a “remote access operation.”
The comments, made at a national security and AI conference attended by 404 Media, are an unusually frank acknowledgment of the FBI’s use of hacking tools, which are often shrouded in secrecy.
“My team, one of the parts of our capability mission is computer network operations programs that do on-network or remote access operations,” Todd Hemmen, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, said Tuesday. Remote access operations are order of phrases When the FBI remotely infiltrates a computer network. In other words, when a government agency hacks a target.
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Especially when it comes to those types of operations, he continued, “AI has tremendous benefits, and they’re not entirely different from the benefits that some hostile nation-states enjoy.” He noted that “the speed at which we can execute, autonomous is not the right word, attacks that are enabled by AI.”
Hemmen was speaking on a panel about how criminals and nation-states are using AI to enhance fraud and fraud. When 404 Media asked for more information about how the FBI is using AI for remote access operations, Hemmen said he did not cite specific examples but spoke more broadly about its benefits.
He pointed to reconnaissance, where hackers look at a target’s network to find possible ways to break into it. “There are very large attack surfaces, and AI can scan those surfaces very efficiently, the first scan in terms of where the vulnerabilities are and how can they be exploited and accessed,” he said. He added that AI can be used to move laterally through networks as hackers move from one location to another to access more data and functionality. Threat actors such as cybercriminals or hostile nation states can then steal the data, but “obviously our mission is different, but we think AI can be applied to any tactic that involves operating on a network. So AI is a game changer in that sense.”
In his role, Hengmen Oversee the department’s technology tools. The FBI did not respond to requests for additional comment.
Little is known about what hacking tools the FBI deploys, in what cases it decides to deploy them, and for what exact purpose. But journalists have been piecing together the pieces over the years. Previously, FBI exploited ‘undisclosed’ vulnerability Hacking suspected visitors to dark web child abuse sites. FBI Remote Operating Unit (ROU) using secret hacking toolsThis is typically reserved for intelligence gathering activities in routine criminal investigations and can complicate the opportunity for criminal defendants to review evidence collected against them. The FBI has also conducted investigations using hacking tools, euphemistically called network probing techniques. Bomb threat and Users of privacy-sensitive email services. The FBI also purchased hacking tools from the notorious spyware vendor NSO Group and considered using them against cell phones in the United States. new york times previously reported.
