ChatGPT: A Rising Threat to Cybersecurity and Ways to Stay Secure

Cybercriminals have started embracing ChatGPT to develop hacking tools quickly. Malicious actors in the cybersecurity spectrum are exploring ChatGPT’s capabilities to develop other chatbots designed to impersonate people to compromise targets.

With this technology gaining attention, it has become a serious challenge for CISOs because ChatGPT is a significant threat to their network security. This technology is even capable of spying on the user’s keyboard storks or developing and deploying ransomware. According to a recent report by Check Point Research, a thread named “ChatGPT – Benefits of Malware” has been identified on underground forums. SecOps teams need to evaluate their cybersecurity strategy to determine the strengths of their defense strategies against the evolving threats of ChatGPT.

Following are a few ways cybercriminals are leveraging this technology to strengthen their attack capabilities:

The rising threat of ChatGPT in cybersecurity

A few underground hacking forums have confirmed the first instances of using ChatGPT to create malicious tools to accomplish their goals. It has given more strength to cyber criminals; because they are able to accomplish a full-blown cyberattack without any development knowledge or risk. These malicious actors are exploring more opportunities to leverage this technology to enhance their capabilities to create different attack vectors to infiltrate the systems.

More fraudulent activities

Cybercriminals can leverage ChatGPT to accomplish their fraudulent activities. Utilizing this technology, it has become easier for them to develop dark web marketplace scripts. Leveraging ChatGPT to create dark web market forums makes it a serious threat to businesses because it promotes cybercrime as a service.

Compromising Business Email

ChatGPT technology is an effective solution for replying to any content query, like emails and essays.

Cybercriminals can leverage this technology by utilizing Business email compromise (BEC) as a vector to accomplish a full-blown attack.

Enterprises have effective tools integrated to identify the BEC attacks, but cybercriminals can leverage ChatGPT to create unique content for each email generated to make it challenging for the SecOps teams to detect.

With the rise of ChatGPT, it is going to be easy for cybercriminals to write phishing emails without any errors and ensure unique formats for every email. The tools are even capable of making the email look urgent and compelling for users to click. The checkpoint report also suggests that the same underground forum had a python code that could encrypt files, and it was developed using ChatGPT. Such codes can be leveraged to encrypt someone’s machine without even having the user interact with it, replicating the way how ransomware works.

Strategies for CISOs to protect from ChatGPT security threats

CISOs need to be aware of the rising threat and ensure they have effective strategies to stay secure:

• Upgrade the cybersecurity tech stack by implementing network detection and response NDR

SecOps teams need to understand the impact of ChatGPT on their business network and what all possible cyber-attack vectors can be developed using this technology. Mid-sized to large-sized enterprises should look out for a comprehensive tool to keep track of the entire business network in real-time to identify any malicious behavior.

Also Read: Preventing Cybercriminals from Using IoT Devices as a Gateway into the Enterprise Network

• Enforce a secure password policy

It is crucial for enterprises to enforce a stringent password management policy as a first line of defense to keep their data secure from theft. CISOs need to ensure that every user on the business network uses a unique and complex password that is hard to guess. Leveraging two-factor authentication (2FA) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) enables the SecOps team to add an additional layer of security to the user account.

CISOs should consider the rising cybersecurity threat of ChatGPT on their business network. It is crucial for the SecOps teams to reimagine their cybersecurity posture and tech stack against evolving threats to keep their IT infrastructure secure.