AI who drives a “dramatic increase” in cyber threats, because automated scans hit 36,000 per second
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- AI feeds a huge increase in cyber attacks
- The US is the primary target for ransomware attacks
- Threat actors turn to vulnerable assets
It will not come as a surprise for many cyber security professionals, but AI is behind a drastic increase in the number of cyber attacks, with new research by Fortinet that reveals the apparent scale of the problem.
The study showed that automated scan activity on an annual basis has seen an increase of 16.7%, with 36,000 scans registered per second worldwide with the research that describes threat actors as “links” to vulnerable digital assets “earlier in the attack life cycle”, in particular, external desktopprotocol.
Infostalers have organizations threatening For a long time, but this study has unveiled a stunning increase of 500% in available logs of compromised systems – which means that more than 1.7 billion stolen references are circulating on the dark web, and notes: “This stream of stolen data has led to a strong increase in targeted cyber attacks against companies and individuals.”
A call for action
The report warns that cyber criminals also benefit from this login data, with an increase of 42% in compromised references that have been observed for sale.
Interestingly, zero daily attacks explain only a “small percentage” of threats, and cyber criminals are increasingly using “live of the land” vulnerabilities to stay unnoticed.
The ransomware-as-a-service landscape is expanding, with new groups of emerging and old players who solidify their winnings. Ransomhub was the most active group in 2024, and claimed that 13%of the victims, with lockbit 3.0 (12%), play (8%) and Medusa (4%) all follow.
So one ransomware Attacks are particularly focused on one country, where the United States take 61% of the incidents, followed by the UK by 6%, and Canada with 5% – a strong indication of the trend against American organizations.
“Our Global Threat Landscape report from 2025 makes clear: cyber criminals scales faster than ever, using AI and automation to get the upper hand,” said Derek Manky, Chief Security Strategist and Global Vice President of Threat Intelligence at Fortiguard Labs.
“Defenders must leave outdated security books and transition to proactive, intelligence -driven strategies that contain AI, zero trust architectures and continuous exposure management.”
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