Check Point Research warns AI technologies like ChatGPT can accelerate cyberattacks in 2023

Check Point Research has warned that ChatGPT and other AI technologies can significantly accelerate the number of cyberattacks in 2023.

According to a 2023 Research Report by CPR, there were 38% more cyber attacks in 2022 than in 2021, with cybercriminals primarily targetting institutions in the USA and UK. The report states that work-from-home environments were a significant driver of increased cyberattacks globally.

Cybercriminals can use ChatGPT to improve their social engineering techniques, making it difficult to tell them apart from actual human conversations.

“Unfortunately, we expect the increase in cyberattack activity only to increase. With AI technologies such as ChatGPT readily available to the public, hackers can generate malicious code and emails at a faster, more automated pace,” the report read.

Cyberattacks peaked in 2022 Q4

The research also finds that the number of cyberattacks peaked in “Q4 with an average of 1168 weekly attacks per organization,” with education, government, and healthcare sectors being the primary target for bad actors.

“The healthcare sector is so lucrative to hackers as they aim to retrieve health insurance information, medical records numbers and, sometimes, even social security numbers with direct threats from ransomware gangs to patients, demanding payment under threats of having patient records released. Ransomware gangs also find the attention gained from attacking a hospital as an attractive plus-point for their notoriety,” the research stated.

Recently, India’s IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnav revealed that 50 websites linked to central and state governments were compromised in 2022.

“There have been attempts from time to time to launch cyber-attacks on Indian cyberspace from both outside and within the country. It has been observed that such attacks compromised computer systems located in different parts of the world and use masquerading techniques and hidden servers to hide the identity of existing systems from which the attacks are launched,” Vaishnav said.

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