Cybersecurity firm Darktrace has warned that since the launch of ChatGPT it has seen an increase in criminals using artificial intelligence to create more sophisticated scams to rip off employees and hack into companies.
The Cambridge-based company, which reported a 92% drop in operating profit in the half to the end of December, said AI was further enabling “hacktivist” cyberattacks that use ransomware to extort money from companies.
The company said it had seen the rise of more convincing and complex scams by hackers since the launch of the hugely popular Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence tool, ChatGPT, last November.
“Darktrace found that while the number of email attacks on its own customer base has remained constant since the launch of ChatGPT, those that rely on tricking victims into clicking malicious links have decreased, while Linguistic complexity, including text volume, punctuation, and sentence length, among others, has decreased. increased,” the company said.
“This indicates that cybercriminals may be redirecting their focus to create more sophisticated social engineering scams that exploit user trust.”
However, Darktrace said that the phenomenon had not yet resulted in a new wave of emerging cybercriminals, simply changing the tactics of the existing cohort.
“ChatGPT has [not] It did, however, significantly lower the barriers to entry for threat actors, but believes it may have helped increase the sophistication of phishing emails, allowing adversaries to create more targeted, personalized, and ultimately, attacks. successful,” the company said.
Darktrace also warned in its results that it had seen a “noticeable” slowdown in companies subscribing to its security products in the last three months of last year. It attributed the drop in its operating profit in the final six months of 2022 to a tax bill related to the stock awards to its chief executive, Poppy Gustafsson, and chief financial officer, Cathy Graham, that forced it to cut its forecast. of free cash flow this year.
The company, whose market capitalization of £1.9bn is far from the soaring highs of nearly £7bn months after the IPO, said it had grown its customer base in a year-on-quarter from 6,573 to 8,178 in the six months prior to the end. from December
Darktrace, which has come under a barrage of criticism from short sellers who are not convinced it can meet its goal of becoming a potential European superpower in the US-dominated cybersecurity space, said it was not concerned about the recent drop in new business.
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“Although there has been a slowdown in new customer acquisition, I am pleased that our investments to retain customers and increase the value of existing and new contracts are paying off,” said Gustafsson, noting year-over-year growth of 36%. in revenue in the six months to the end of December.
“Our business continues to operate in a challenging macroeconomic environment, with continued strong revenue growth year-over-year.”
