Ransomware as a service (RaaS) is an unusual type of software as a service (SaaS) provided as a vendor platform through the internet. Among the many kinds of software as a service provided by tech vendors, managed ransomware services is different as it represents an offering used by criminals to attack IT systems.

To prevent the spread of ransomware, security software uses artificial intelligence to detect, quarantine, and delete infected files. Security software can use unsupervised machine learning to create artificial intelligence models that are trained by a data set to recognize the difference between clean and malicious files. Natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision help detect unusual behavior in emails or documents.

Microsoft uses a monotonous model that runs on top of the traditional classification model and captures 95% of malicious software. This technique was developed by researchers at UC Berkeley AI and is used to search for attributes of malicious files rather than a combination of good and bad files for training.

A report by cybersecurity firm Capgemini found artificial intelligence to help accelerate the industry and focus on the biggest problems. Three in four security experts surveyed say AI will reduce the time it takes to detect malware, and two in three will reduce the cost of responding to a breach.

Additionally, antivirus companies and security companies are increasingly adopting AI. By 2019, about a fifth of security organizations were using AI, but two-thirds plan to incorporate technology in 2020.

How AI May Fuel Ransomware Attacks?

The fact that phishing is still the primary means of delivering malware indicates that some people are still vulnerable to fraudulent activity that occasionally enters their email inbox, Kuwawa said.

It also reflects the fact that today's ransomware campaign doesn't seem to need AI's help. Malwarebytes and Barracuda Networks have yet to see ransomware AI in action. An analysis by Malwarebytes, which investigates the potentialization of malware weapons, predicts that AI ransomware will not actually be seen for another 1-3 years.

Today, Kujawa said he is primarily interested in the idea of ​​AI that can profile the best-targeted people within an organization.

AI could also find a way for malware to spread to hundreds of machines around the world, turning it into ammunition for AI arms races.

In this way, you can take advantage of the types of vulnerabilities that a particular security provider detects, or train your model to detect soft areas under attack.

"Some researchers have done lab tests and created internal AI malware, which is certainly possible, but how you actually see it and how often you see it. It's my biggest concern, "said Kujawa." We see that artificial intelligence and machine learning in action are used to extract data from leaks, social media, or other places to create a profile for a particular user or an ideal victim profile. All of this information can be used to create much more efficient spear phishing for businesses and anyone else. "