The world's top intelligence alliance: AI could supercharge cyberattacks within months
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Contribution by
Izabelė Pukėnaitė
Cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology is poised to supercharge offensive hacking capabilities and urgent action is needed to face up to the threat, US, British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand officials said on Monday.
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The Five Eyes intelligence alliance says advanced AI models could dramatically increase the speed and sophistication of cyberattacks within months.
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Officials warn AI is reducing the time between discovering a software vulnerability and exploiting it.
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The agencies are urging organizations to accelerate patching, strengthen access controls and assume breaches will occur.
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The warning reflects growing concern that frontier AI systems could significantly boost offensive hacking capabilities while also offering new defensive tools.
The intelligence alliance commonly known as the "Five Eyes" said in a three-page statement that, "Frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. The timeline is not years, it is months."
The statement was light on details and mostly restated core cybersecurity advice, such as swiftly patching faulty software and not putting systems online unless necessary.
It also warned that AI is "already here" and is reducing the time between the discovery of software vulnerabilities and their exploitation, making delayed patching increasingly risky. Officials said organizations should assume breaches will occur and focus on rapid containment and recovery.
"Secure-by-design and secure-by-default must become standard practice – not an aspiration," the statement said.
The warning was another indication of officials' increasing concerns over models such as Anthropic's "Mythos" or OpenAI's "GPT-5.5-Cyber," which are said to allow users to quickly execute complex – and potentially devastating – hacks.
Earlier this month, Anthropic was forced to disable a version of Mythos after the US government ordered it to suspend access to the models for foreign nationals over alleged national security concerns. Around the same time, the US cyber defense agency CISA – which was among those cosigning Monday's statement – reduced the deadlines imposed on government officials to deal with serious digital vulnerabilities in their networks to three days, citing AI threats.
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