Hackers that have ties with Beijing and Tehran, as well as other foreign governments, are utilizing artificial intelligence tools from the United States to boost cyberattacks not just against Washington but the rest of the world as well, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday citing US officials and latest security research. Numerous hacker groups in 2024 used Google LLC’s Gemini chabot to help them write malicious codes and search for cyber vulnerabilities already known to the public, the tech giant’s experts shared, adding that the tool also assisted these groups in search of specific companies that could be targeted. Google added that the perpetrators are known to have links with China, Iran, Russia and North Korea. “AI is not yet a panacea for threat actors and may actually be a far more important tool for defenders. The real impact here is they are gaining some efficiency. They can operate faster and scale up,” Google Vice President of Threat Intelligence Sandra Joyce commented.
Chinese, Iranian hackers Soon Will Use Quantum Computers
Chinese researchers at Shanghai University say they’ve inched towards cracking military-grade encryption — with the help of a quantum computer. In a Chinese language paper published late last month in the Chinese Journal of Computers, the researchers claim they were able to use one of D-Wave’s off-the-shelf quantum computers to attack Substitution-Permutation Networks (SPNs), classical cryptography algorithms employed in widely-used encryption standards. As Tom’s Hardware reports, the paper delineates two distinct methodologies, both rooted in D-Wave’s quantum annealing algorithm. SPNs are used in algorithms tasked with protecting sensitive institutions including militaries and banks — meaning that, if the researcher’s claims are true, their findings could force institutions to revisit their cybersecurity measures.
Experts have long warned that quantum computers, which work in a fundamentally different way than conventional ones, could soon break encryption standards that keep highly classified information from the prying eyes of hackers. The latest research suggests the tech is making strides towards such an eventuality.
According to the hackers’ paper, their findings represent “the first time that a real quantum computer has posed a real and substantial threat to multiple full-scale SPN structured algorithms in use today,” as quoted by The South China Morning Post.