In its simplest version: Hacker-AI (Type I) uses AI for hacking arbitrary IT systems, i.e., finding vulnerabilities automatically, e.g., elevating privileges/user roles (sys-admin or system), stealing encryption keys, hiding attacking tools from being detected, or creating code that is irremovable on (once) occupied systems. It would create exploits automatically. In an advanced version, Hacker-AI (Type II) would be actively operating malware on computer systems with sys-admin rights, trying to stay hidden from detection, and making itself irremovable from any later deployed software.

In my post “Hacker-AI and Digital Ghosts – Pre-AGI”, I argued that Hacker-AI and Digital Ghosts are feasible and a serious threat to our civilization. In my follow-up post, “Improved Security to Prevent Hacker-AI and Digital Ghosts”, I proposed several solutions to eliminate this threat, e.g., via a separate layer of standardized security-related operations detached from regular tasks in which we ignore all security-related (regular) results.

In this post, I will discuss methods of how hackers and Hacker-AI gain the upper hand in our current cyber-security ecosystem – despite the potential use of AI in cyber defense.

I don’t expect this post to surprise or educate hackers (criminal or governmental) or anyone knowledgeable enough to be a hacker -- they know already about Stuxnet, or Pegasus from the NSO-Group. The relative scarcity of Zero-Day Vulnerabilities could tell us that hacking is still not done systematically, but I am not sure about the cyberwar capabilities of governments. Moreover, many (enhanced) tools are required to be effective as a hacker. Some dumps of tools from hacker/government groups were published – but too little is publicly known, so I don’t dare to have a (public) opinion about that. I still assume it is not easy for lonely malicious actors or, more specifically, smart system developers, all trying to damage our (cyber-) world, to quickly turn into professional/efficient hackers. But the broad availability of these (more enhanced) software features could change quickly.

As a side note: I have had a question. In what world would we live if the physics of building nuclear weapons were easy enough to enable students to build nukes in school experiments? This world would likely be much different (less free, more surveillance), or most of us would no...

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