Greetings to all of you wonderful #RTWAB readers! I apologize in advance that the next several posts are going to be AI related. However, the reason behind this is that things are happening way faster than even I had anticipated. Take the article I am sharing today as an example.
Back in early October while attending GrrCon (a local hacker conference) one of the talks centered on the concepts of future 'AI Swarms'. To understand a super high level of the concept of the swarm, think back to the sentinels in the move Matrix. A group of autonomous AI agents wrecking havoc once they are inside your network.
I thought the speaker was doing a little too much FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) for what was 'realistic' for the right now. I figured that we had 6-9 months of runway before we started seeing that. Well in a way I was wrong, while not quick an AI Swarm this campaign showed how you can use AI Agents spread 'wide' rather than going 'deep'.
Key Findings- First documented case of a cyberattack largely executed without human intervention at scale
- AI autonomously discovered vulnerabilities and successfully exploited them in live operations
- Threat actor leveraged AI to execute 80-90% of tactical operations independently
- Campaign targeted approximately 30 entities with validated successful intrusions
- Targets included major technology corporations, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies across multiple countries
Other items of notes are around the level of technical prowess used. Besides the usual security utilities like network scanners, password crackers, etc., they used Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers.
Interestingly enough, one of the things that I struggle with as healthcare security uses AI more is around accuracy. An important limitation emerged during investigation:
"Claude frequently overstated findings and occasionally fabricated data during autonomous operations, claiming to have obtained credentials that didn't work or identifying critical discoveries that proved to be publicly available information."
I do appreciate the level of response that Anthropic took. I won't get into the details too much as I want you to read the report. However, this does bring to the forefront the need to start to prioritize AI defensive measures. I just had a talk with my CISO earlier this week and he brought up that he is going to bring some items forward in this space.
I was happy but not suprised to see Anthropic's perspective on continuing AI development even after something like this happened:
"If AI models can be misused for cyberattacks at this scale, why continue to develop and release them? The answer is that the very abilities that allow Claude to be used in these attacks also make it crucial for cyber defense."
Some key takeaways for security professionals, AI security and MCP implementations:
- AI-orchestrated attacks are now reality - not theoretical future threats
- MCP and tool integration significantly amplifies AI attack capabilities
- Task decomposition allows attackers to bypass AI safety measures by presenting malicious tasks as legitimate isolated requests
- Role-play and persona attacks remain effective at bypassing safety training
- Context isolation between tasks allows malicious orchestration
- MCP servers can be weaponized as attack infrastructure
- Tool access controls
There is so much more useful information in the report. If you want a shortened version go here.
You can read the full report here.