Splunk.conf: Splunk urges users to eat their 'cyber veggies' | Computer Weekly

"Organisations' lack of attention to some of the most basic tenets of cyber hygiene not only continues to hamstring defenders but increasingly leaves the door wide not only to career cyber criminals using tried-and-tested tactics, but also less sophisticated actors exploiting artificial intelligence (AI) agents and models to power attacks at scale in an emerging phenomenon that experts at data observability specialist Splunk are calling vibe-hacking."

""Cyber vegetables are important," said Fetterman. "The reason for that is because the bar has been lowered for attackers using AI to scale their attacks and require less sophistication to do the things that they want to do. That makes it easier to find the low-hanging fruit for things like ransomware.""

"He noted in particular the emergence of an AI-powered ransomware PromptLock - which was discovered by ESET researchers at the end of August - although this turned out to be a proof of concept (PoC) developed by engineers at the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University (NYU),"

Neglect of basic cyber hygiene is enabling both seasoned cybercriminals and less skilled actors to use AI agents and models to scale attacks, a trend labelled vibe-hacking. Businesses are urged to 'eat their cyber vegetables' to strengthen fundamental security practices, though achieving that remains a significant challenge for leadership. An AI-powered ransomware example, PromptLock, was detected by ESET researchers but proved to be a proof of concept developed by NYU Tandon engineers. AI lowers the technical barrier for attackers, making it easier to identify and exploit low-hanging fruit for ransomware and related intrusions.

Read at ComputerWeekly.com