The NCSC said the scope of spyware targets has “expanded” in recent years, with bankers and wealthy executives increasingly under attack.
U.K. cyber officials and government ministers will also use the CYBERUK conference to highlight a doubling in the number of nationally significant cyberattacks on Britain in a single year, pointing out the majority of incidents are now linked to attackers from nation states, rather than criminal gangs.
Richard Horne, the agency’s chief executive, will say companies that don’t see cybersecurity as a priority are “no longer just naïve,” but are “failing to grasp the reality of today’s world,” according to pre-released extracts of his speech.
Countries such as China possess an “eye-watering level of sophistication” to attack other nations, he will add, warning the U.K. faces a cybersecurity “perfect storm.”
Mythos threat
Chief among the threats is the emergence of frontier AI technology, which Horne will warn is “rapidly enabling discovery and exploitation of existing vulnerabilities at scale.”
Earlier this month, the AI company Anthropic released details of its new Mythos model, which its researchers claim is too dangerous to be released due to its alleged ability to allow members of the public to “find and exploit sophisticated vulnerabilities” in systems.