Chinese, Russian Hackers Using AI to Improve Hacking Skills 

In a report published on Wednesday, Microsoft indicated that state-backed Russian, Chinese, and Iranian hackers using AI tools from the Microsoft-backed OpenAI company to improve their skills and deceive their targets. 

Microsoft mentioned in its report that it had tracked the group of hackers linked to the Russian military intelligence, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the Chinese and North Korean governments while they were trying to improve the hacking campaigns using large language models (LLMs). These computer programs, often called “Artificial Intelligence” rely on massive amounts of texts to generate human-like responses. 

This discovery was announced at a time when the tech giant has imposed a comprehensive ban on state-backed groups of hackers from using the company’s AI tools. 

Before the release of the report, Tom Burt, Microsoft’s Vice President for Customer Security told Reuters in an interview: “Independent of whether there’s any violation of the law or any violation of terms of service, we just don’t want those actors that we’ve identified – that we track and know are threat actors of various kinds – we don’t want them to have access to this technology.” 

However, Russian, North Korean, and Iranian diplomatic officials did not respond to the letters seeking from them a comment on the allegations. 

For his part, Liu Pengyu, China’s U.S company spokesperson said it   opposed “groundless smears and accusations against China” and advocated for the “safe, reliable and controllable” deployment of AI technology to “enhance the common well-being of all mankind.” 

OpenAI and Microsoft described the use of their AI tools by hackers as “early-stage” and “incremental”. 

Microsoft reported that hackers believed to be working for Russia’s GRU used the models to study satellite and radar technologies relevant to military operations in Ukraine. North Korean hackers used them for spear-phishing, while Iranian hackers used them to draft convincing emails, including attracting feminists to a malicious website. Chinese state-backed hackers also experimented with the models. 

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