The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) says AI-powered malware is "highly likely" to be a part of a future ransomware attack on Britain’s critical national infrastructure between now and 2028. The warning accompanies its annual review and a separate assessment exploring how AI could change cyber threats over the next two years. The cyber arm of signals intelligence agency GCHQ did not provide much detail about what form this AI malware may take. However, it alluded to open source AI security tools that were initially intended to assist security researchers being repurposed for nefarious activity. Attackers are already repurposing such tools. For example, researchers are increasingly seeing widespread abuse of ARTEX, an open source, Chinese-made AI red-teaming platform, in attacks on UK registrar 123 Reg , Microsoft 365 , and others since its launch in July. In its pessimistic scenario for 2028, the NCSC envisages "a significant increase in the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks worldwide," with wider adoption of AI tools making attribution harder. China "has likely played a role" in supplying those tools in this future, "enabling them to hide their activities within the noise," the report states. It also considers a further threat: an autonomous attacker operating beyond its human operator’s control. The NCSC says it "is a realistic possibility such an entity could self-replicate and conduct cyberattacks at will, with no apparent motivation or restraint." Such attacks would likely complicate geopolitical relationships, owing again to attribution difficulties, making it easier for countries that order attacks on others to deny their involvement. The UK’s plans for AI defense
At a time when each Patch Tuesday seems to come loaded with record numbers of bugs , the NCSC acknowledges that AI is already changing vulnerability discovery and patching. The body is also exploring how AI could help defenders keep pace. Project DROMOS began earlier this year with a four-week pilot analyzing government code repositories, before expanding into selected operational environments. The Government Cyber Coordination Centre (GC3) launched the project with the AI Security Institute and other departments…