Today we will talk about artificial intelligence and how it makes cyber security threats more difficult to mitigate and monitor.
Even though ethical hackers have been utilising AI-powered tools to enhance their own capabilities, on the other side, black hat hackers and script kiddies have also had increasing success in their attacks.
Issue 1: AI Enhanced Cyber Security Attacks & Ransomware
The use of AI have been enhancing threat actors capabilities to generate malware capable of adapting and avoiding detection, generating deep fakes and sophisticated phishing attacks that imitate human behaviour quite well.
Pair this with threat actors with advanced knowledge and years of experience in cyber crime, artificial intelligence becomes less of a tool that acts like training wheels and more of an agent executing complex tasks with the aid of a threat actor.
With 87% of firms reporting more successful phishing attacks, increasing deepfakes and ransomware campaigns, attackers employ AI to construct convincing lures. A simple LLM (large language model), like Gemini (Google), can already mimic not only text but also speech with human emotion that is difficult for the average person to identify as artificial.
48% of groups consider AI-powered tools to be the biggest threat because they automate attack chains, making them faster and more difficult to detect.
The barrier to entry into cyber security has not only lowered for ethical hackers but also for cyber criminals, leading to more opportunities to make a profit, spread false propaganda and more. With the ensuing chaos, it gets more difficult to maintain and monitor current procedures and uphold a viable defense in information warfare.
PromptLock Ransomware
PromptLock, the first known AI-powered ransomware, was found by ESET researchers in August of 2025.
It utilises a local GPT-OSS-20b model via the Ollama API to create real-time Lua scripts for file enumeration, exfiltration, and encryption across Linux and Windows.
Although a proof-of-concept, which was submitted to VirusTotal from the United States, it demonstrates how AI has the ability to independently intensify threats.
Using AI in the Russia-Ukraine War
Around October of 2025, Russian hackers (UAC-0219), attacked Ukraine using malicious PowerShell scripts and automated phishing, taking advantage of flaws like CVE-2023-43770.
Issue 2: The Skills Gap in Cyber Security
As of 2024 the cyber security workforce stagnated to about 5.5 million professionals, leaving gap in the workforce of about 4.8 million left unfilled.
So, why if there’s such a large skills gap, can junior and newbie cyber specialists not fill those roles?
It is because businesses prefer to hire intermediate to senior level specialists, leaving very few opportunities for those wanting to enter a career in cyber security. Some of you may think this is unfair. I thought so too, but consider this; the last few years left cyber security firms with limited budgets to employ new staff, freezing hiring entirely and trying to recover from the 2020 pandemic.
39% of firms say that lack of money is the main reason for layoffs (25%), hiring freezes (38%), and fewer promotions (32%).
Burnout caused by high turnover, expensive certifications and skill deficits in areas like incident response and zero trust, contributes to this growing skill gap.
Additionally, with the advent of AI, the vectors and advancement of attacks in the arsenal of threat actors have grown considerably. Hiring someone with little to no experience, will take several years to get that employee on a level where they can efficiently manage the expanding online battlefield.
Depending on your view, I have either been fortunate or unfortunate enough to have experienced this firsthand, hence, why I am developing this site.
My goal is to support and develop beginners and junior people’s skills in cyber security so that gap can be bridged alongside my own. If this sounds like you, follow me on social media to keep up to date with the articles and videos I post, so that we can grow together.
With the lack of experience from junior applicants, the skills gap is only growing larger and leaving many mid-to-senior roles open as well as business infrastructure vulnerable to attacks automated and refined by AI.
On the up-side, AI also has the potential to speed up skill development to new and junior cyber security specialists. As we are in the chaotically young age of AI, it may seem that bridging this seems impossible, but the potential does exist close this gap quickly.
Barriers to Junior Applicants
31% of organizations do not have any entry-level hiring, and 15% do not have any juniors with one to three years of experience. Instead, they prioritize the training of seasoned employees.
Despite transferable abilities from ethical hacking, recruiters require years of experience, which prevents portfolios or hackathons from demonstrating promise. Professionals place an excessive amount of emphasis on AI (23%) and cloud computing (30%), but managers are more interested in soft skills like communication (25%).
AI’s Dual Impact
Because threats like AI-driven attacks require specialized knowledge beyond junior levels, AI ranks among the top shortages (more than one-third of organisations reference this), widening the gap.
With automation taking care of repetitive work while professionals must handle AI tools among new vectors, it raises questions about future capabilities. Positively, if employers invest in training, AI accelerates progress by mentoring juniors and increasing efficiency by 30%.
Issue 3: Vulnerability Attack Surfaces are Expanding
Because of the tremendous spread of linked devices and reliance on remote cloud infrastructure, vulnerability attack surfaces have expanded into cloud and IoT environments, giving cyber attackers more entry points.
Why is this occurring?
IoT devices frequently have inadequate built-in security, such as unencrypted communications and default passwords, and cloud connectivity increases vulnerabilities by creating constant data flows that are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks and eavesdropping.
Where does AI fit in?
In the evolving cloud and IoT attack surfaces, AI serves two purposes: attackers use it as a weapon to create complex exploits, while defenders use it to improve detection in the face of increasing vulnerabilities.
The “efficiency-vulnerability paradox” happens because AI makes IoT-cloud scalability better but also adds bugs to algorithms and new ways to change data, which requires hybrid Zero Trust designs.
Sources
On a Side Note
I apologise for not placing references properly within the text of this article. All future articles will have references in-text and listed at the end of the article.
Thank You to Perplexity
I’d like to thank Perplexity for making the research of this article more efficient and sifting through many sites to find good references.
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