AI weaponised to launch disinformation campaigns and cyber attacks

Malicious state-sponsored actors and criminal gangs are moving to weaponise AI to increase the scale of disinformation campaigns amid warnings foreign-backed agents will target the US election.

State-sponsored actors and criminal gangs are seeking to weaponise Artificial Intelligence and new technologies to ramp-up disinformation campaigns and cyber attacks. Picture: Supplied

Malicious state-sponsored actors and criminal gangs are moving to weaponise artificial intelligence to increase the speed and scale of disinformation campaigns and cyber attacks amid security warnings that foreign-backed agents could target the US election.

US Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency executive director Brandon Wales told The Australian AI and other new technologies would be “exploited for both good and evil”, heaping more pressure on tech companies and governments to ramp up security.

Mr Wales, who is meeting with senior Australian Signals Directorate officials this week including Australian Cyber Security Centre head Abigail Bradshaw, said some foreign states were adopting AI, deepfakes and other tools to “turbocharge” disinformation.

“We have seen Russia develop the playbook in 2016 on what election interference looks like but many other countries have adopted their techniques. New technologies, whether deepfakes and other AI tools, will only turbocharge the ability of those adversaries to deploy disinformation at scale,” Mr Wales said.

“Just in the last 24 hours, US intelligence officials have come out at the worldwide threats hearing talking about the potential risks in the 2024 US presidential election.

“Disinformation campaigns launched by multiple nation-state actors who have an interest in sewing discord inside the United States … this new technology gives them added capabilities to do so.”

Mr Wales, who co-ordinated CISA’s response to the SolarWinds and Colonial Pipeline attacks, said while critical infrastructure operators were working more closely with governments to protect assets and services, adversaries including China continued to target their operations.

The veteran national security official said disinformation campaigns are fuelled by the “scale of which they operate … and appetite of the consumer base to consume that type of content”.

He confirmed adversaries were in the early stages of experimenting with AI technologies and tech companies, social media platforms and governments must unite to combat disinformation.

“We are seeing that today in AI where malicious actors are attempting to weaponise it and largely increase the speed and scale of their ability to conduct whatever nefarious activity … whether that’s disinformation campaigns or enhancing the sophistication of a cyber attack,” he said.

“It is incumbent upon us to do everything that we can to reduce those risks and manage them effectively so we can exploit AI for all of the potential positive benefits. Whether that’s the economic benefits of efficiency that we can get in industry to the security benefits that we can get in cyber security and elsewhere.

Ms Bradshaw said while AI could be used to generate phishing emails on an industrial scale, it would play a pivotal role in strengthening cyber defences.

“We can see the great potential for artificial intelligence to assist us in our cyber security function if you’re able to automate to a certain extent and scale up the capacity to identify vulnerabilities in code, for example. And imagine then the capacity to leverage that to be able to block,” she said.

“We’re actually really positive about the benefits of artificial intelligence. We want to promote the beneficial use … to actually enhance cyber security.”

Mr Wales said adversaries continue to target key assets, and cited the recent discovery of “Chinese actors who have compromised US critical infrastructure to pre-position for future disruptive or destructive attacks”.

“They’re using techniques that are difficult to detect, and that has allowed them in some cases to be inside these networks for several years. Despite all the work we have done and success we have had in improving the baseline across US critical infrastructure … our adversaries are not letting up.”

Ms Bradshaw, along with ASD director-general Rachel Noble, has briefed the boards of more than one-third of ASX200 companies in the past year.

“In terms of those entities who are regulated under our critical infrastructure legislation, around about 90 per cent of those … have joined or are joining our ASD partnership program,” Ms Bradshaw said, adding cyber security must be treated as a corporate risk and escalated to the “same levels as we’ve seen financial risk and WHS risk be escalated”.