Research from Fortinet FortiGuard Labs reveals a record rise in AI-powered, automated attacks, with 36,000 scans per second to pick out targets early. This represents a 16.7% year-over-year (YoY) increase. This is facilitated by the darknet’s cybercrime-as-a-service ecosystem, allowing initial access, exploit kits, and large credential dumps. 

According to the research, exploit kits saw more than 40,000 new CVEs in 2024, representing a 39% increase. Furthermore, the analyzed credential dumps included more 100 billion records. There was also a 500% YoY rise in logs provided by infostealing malware, amounting to 1.7 billion credential records shared. Underground forums saw a 42% YoY increase in compromised records shared. 

The report asserts that AI tools such as FraudGPT and BlackmailerV3 make cyberattacks (such as phishing) more effective and challenging to detect. Ms. Kris Bondi, CEO and Co-Founder of Mimoto, comments, “The rise of AI, combined with automation and cybercrime-as-a-service (CaaS), is increasing the sophistication, speed, and ultimately, the success of attacks. The biggest risk AI brings to businesses is the ability for cybercrime to scale quickly. Just like any other business, AI enables the ability to automate and perform more functions faster. For cyber attackers, this means the ability to launch more attacks with the same resources. Brute force attacks are faster as is the ability to experiment with different AI generated attacks simultaneously. Other AI risks to business include the relatively new phenomenon of sophisticated attack tools now being available to unsophisticated bad actors and, of course, the use of deepfakes, which continue to improve.

“Cybersecurity strategists with hacking expertise are skilled at staying in step with the most innovative attack methods. Having said all of this, organizations do need to be concerned. If they focus solely on keeping attackers out, they will fail. To feel comfortable, they need to have a security posture that also addresses bad actors that have already gotten into their systems.”