The UK’s top cybersecurity agency has warned that the country would face cyberattacks involving artificial intelligence-powered malware on its key infrastructure, including airports, hospitals, and power stations within two years.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said hostile actors are “highly likely” to use AI to increase the scale and efficiency of their cyberattack operations.
“For decades, we have collectively got away with doing tech on the cheap,” NCSC chief Richard Horne said on Monday.
“In the coming months, we face a real prospect of an unprecedented rise in the number of cyber incidents,” Dr Horne said.
Russia and China would start using AI more “routinely” in cyberattacks, the report warned, adding that Chinese cyber activity is the “most sophisticated and sustained cyber challenge facing the UK”.
“Vulnerabilities that have been tolerated for far too long can now be discovered and exploited at a scale that was once unimaginable,” Dr Horne said in a speech, ahead of the launch of NCSC's State of the Cyber Nation report.
He urged all organisations across the UK to “take the responsibility now to make different choices”, including addressing the failure to invest in their technology adequately.
Failing to make these choices will lead to leaders “having to look their investors, shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, in the eye and explain...when food isn’t on shelves, lights aren’t on, businesses have gone under”, the NCSC chief said.
It is “highly likely that between now and 2028, AI-powered malware will have been used in a ransomware attack on the UK”, the agency warned in its annual report published on Tuesday.
In this increasingly common form of cybercrime, criminals use malware to lock a victim's files, devices, or network, and demand a ransom payment to restore access.
Technology “underpins the automation of physical processes that are vital to modern life”, including electricity and manufacturing lines, as well as heating and refrigeration controls, he said, adding that the recent cyberattacks on refrigeration systems in French supermarkets showed how hostile actors could exploit civilian infrastructure.
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The latest report comes as governments and corporations scrambled to urgently update cybersecurity defences last month after the AI-assisted discovery of a major bug in a programming language key to 70 per cent of websites globally.
Experts warned that the security vulnerability would let hackers easily break into websites.
The report also comes amid the UK’s growing investment in defence and resilience capabilities, including greater investment in cyber defence.
Last week, Chancellor John Healey announced greater investment to help the UK harness AI for cyber defence, including £60 million for the first phase of a national Cyber Shield.
He also announced £70m for a new National Exposure and Real-Time Vulnerability (NERV) Centre to identify vulnerabilities across critical infrastructure and the economy, and a new AI Cyber Security Centre of Excellence,
“We need every organisation in the UK to take action now. Not only to protect their customers, services and livelihoods, but because cybersecurity is now part of the front line defence of our nation,” said Anne Keast-Butler, director of the UK security agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
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