Nicholas Butts, Director of AI and Cybersecurity Policy at Microsoft, on Friday listed three recent threats to India specifically, noting that it’s the seventh most targeted country in the world when it comes to cybersecurity, and the third most targeted in Asia.
“In February, there was a new threat actor that was called ‘EvilTokens’ that we began to track. It’s essentially two individuals that were able to vibe-code using open-source models and closed-source models. You would get access to a lot of tools that you were able to use for expensive cyber purposes.
It was a totally autonomous criminal infrastructure selling access to this for $1,500, with a $500 subscription a month for first-time buyers. It impacted more than 10,000 organisations across 120 countries.”
READ | “1 In 3 Chance AI Will kill Humanity In 10 Years”: Ex-Google DeepMind Researcher Alex Turner At NDTV World Summit As a second example, he cited “Russian and Chinese state-sponsored actors using agents as part of their espionage campaign”. “As late as yesterday (October 22), Microsoft published a new threat intel report about a new state actor that we track as ‘Storm 0940′, a Chinese state-sponsored linked actor mainly targeting data theft and espionage purposes,” he explained. As a third threat, he said cybercriminals are becoming a lot more capable with AI.
