"The withdrawn paper [PDF], co-authored by researchers from MIT Sloan and Safe Security, claimed, "Our recent analysis of over 2800 ransomware incidents has revealed an alarming trend: AI plays an increasingly significant role in these attacks. In 2024, 80.83 percent of recorded ransomware events were attributed to threat actors utilizing AI." Completed in April, the paper was cited in an MIT Sloan blog post last month titled "80 percent of ransomware attacks now use artificial intelligence." It has since been echoed elsewhere."
""It describes almost every major ransomware group as using AI - without any evidence (it's also not true, I monitor many of them). It even talks about Emotet (which hasn't existed for many years) as being AI driven." Marcus Hutchins, another cybersecurity expert of some note, concurred with Beaumont's assessment in a LinkedIn post. "The paper was so absurd I burst out laughing at the title,""
An MIT Sloan 80.83% AI-attribution claim for 2024 ransomware, based on analysis of over 2,800 incidents, has been withdrawn. Security researcher Kevin Beaumont called the claim "absolutely ridiculous," saying it labeled almost every major ransomware group as using AI without evidence and misattributed Emotet as AI-driven. Cybersecurity expert Marcus Hutchins also criticized the methodology as absurd and harmful to the field's credibility. Google's AI verification stated the claim is not supported by current data. Following criticism, MIT Sloan removed the 80% attribution and shifted emphasis toward defenses.
Read at Theregister
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]