No doubt your security vendor is telling you that AI is going to change the playing field for hackers and that their AI is the best defense. This may one day be true, but it doesn’t appear that this science fiction has arrived yet. Think about the “regular” use of AI by millions of people around the World. No one has landed on the “killer app” that justifies all of the hype. There is a lot of promising experimentation, and AI is definitely improving efficiency of existing workflows and processes — but so far it is evolutionary and not revolutionary.

The same thing applies to the smaller group of hackers using AI. Lots of promising experimentation, and some improved efficiency. We haven’t seen an explosion of novel attacks or a radical increase in attack velocity. What AI has done is enhance the capabilities of people with limited experience. Hacking takes a range of skills and which used to take time to master. This functioned as a barrier to entry for many that lacked the time to invest in learning. With AI support, it is easier to hack so the number of threat actors and the overall volume increases.

Like everything financially motivated, efficiency is a strong motivator for threat actors. They aren’t going to waste a bunch of time and resources on new techniques when the existing techniques are still effective. We are seeing attacks increasing in complexity and effectiveness as multiple techniques are chained together — but these are the attacks we are used to. The basic security controls are still the most effective. Once you have the fundamentals covered, only then should you be exploring the latest and greatest hyped tools the vendors are promoting.

https://thehackernews.com/2025/02/debunking-ai-hype-inside-real-hacker.html