AI makes China leading threat to US critical infrastructure, says FBI official

China has been regarded by FBI Deputy Assistant Director Cynthia Kaiser to be the leading threat faced by U.S. critical infrastructure, with its state-backed threat operations leveraging artificial intelligence to facilitate increasingly efficient cyber intrusions, reports The Register. AI has been harnessed by Chinese hackers to facilitate large-scale creation of fraudulent business profiles and more sophisticated spear-phishing emails, as well as improved initial scanning efforts, said Kaiser in an interview during the RSA Conference. "We see a lot of adversaries just trying it out. How could I use AI here? What would it mean there? And it might just mean they've enriched a target campaign, it doesn't mean they've created polymorphic malware that can change when it's on a system," noted Kaiser, who also warned about the use of AI for improved mapping of targeted networks. Such a development was noted by Kaiser to necessitate the implementation of multi-factor authentication across systems.