UK warned of possible unprecedented rise in cyber incidents in coming months

Richard Horne, chief executive of the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), will warn that there is a real prospect of an unprecedented rise in cyber incidents in the coming months. He attributes the risk to vulnerabilities tolerated for too long being discovered and exploited at previously unimaginable scale, rather than to AI creating entirely new attack methods. Experts have not yet observed a corresponding rise in exploitation. The NCSC assesses that it is highly likely AI-powered malware will be used in a ransomware attack on the UK’s critical infrastructure by 2028, and says China and Russia will routinely use AI in their cyber operations by then.