A major new study is pushing back against one of the most persistent fears in cybersecurity, with the findings suggesting that AI’s impact on cybercrime is far less dramatic.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Strathclyde analyzed more than 100,000,000 forum posts and chat discussions from the cybercrime underground spanning more than 15 years.
According to the researchers, AI is mostly being used by cybercriminals in the same way an office worker might use it: to assist in mundane tasks. The researchers also find that AI is not functioning as a meaningful skill multiplier for low-skilled actors, as beginners hoping to use AI chatbots as a shortcut into hacking are largely disappointed.
“AI is seeing some early adoption in existing large-scale, low-profit passive income schemes and trivial forms of fraud but there is little evidence that it is so far giving rise to widespread disruption in cybercrime. It is also not being widely used as a skill multiplier or innovative disruptor for cybercrime-specific coding domains (which already rely heavily on old, pre-made resources, scripts, and exploits).
Instead, it is replacing existing means of code pasting, error checking, and cheatsheet consultation, mostly for generic aspects of software development involved in cybercrime, and largely for already skilled actors, with low-skill actors finding little utility in vibe coding tools compared to pre-made scripts.”
The study indicates that fears about AI creating an army of superhackers are largely unfounded. For now, the researchers appear to suggest that cybercriminals do not see AI as a catalyst for reshaping the economic structures of cybercrime.
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