The United Kingdom will likely face artificial intelligence cyberattacks on its critical infrastructure by 2028 as criminals and states, including China and Russia, increasingly use AI in their cyberactivity, Britain’s cyber chief said Tuesday.
That could include AI-powered malware for ransomware attacks as the technology will allow “vulnerabilities that have been tolerated for far too long” to be discovered and exploited “at a scale that was once unimaginable,” said Richard Horne, the head of the National Cyber Security Centre.
One such vulnerability was discovered in refrigeration units that were targeted by hackers who turned up the temperature, causing food to thaw. The UK has also been affected, Horne said.
In a speech marking the publication of the annual cyber report by the National Cyber Security Centre, or NCSC, Horne said that the leaders of businesses and organisations of all sizes who have “got away with tech on the cheap” will have to explain why “food isn’t on the shelves, lights aren’t on, businesses have gone under,” if they fail to invest in cybersecurity or update out-of-date technology.
Chinese cyberactivity is the “most sophisticated and sustained cyber challenge facing the UK” while both Russia and China will routinely use AI to achieve their geopolitical goals, the report said.
Russia is intentionally conducting cybercampaigns which fall below the threshold of armed conflict, while Iran is carrying out attacks against the UK and targeting individuals who are a threat to the Iranian government, Horne said.
The use of AI by states and criminals is highly likely to increase the scale and efficiency of hostile operations, but AI is more likely to be used to enhance and scale existing tactics and techniques rather than find brand new vulnerabilities, the report said.
Technology “underpins the automation of physical processes that are vital to modern life,” Horne said. That includes, he said, electricity switching, sluice gates in water facilities, dam operations, manufacturing lines, heating and refrigeration controls.
The recent cyberattacks on refrigeration systems in French supermarkets showed how easily hostile actors could exploit civilian infrastructure, Horne said.
Fridges across Europe have been affected, including in the UK, where security experts from the NCSC worked “through the night” to contact organisations with the vulnerable technology, Horne told The Associated Press.
Refrigeration systems in France were attacked because they were using old technology which was no longer being updated and that was connected directly to the internet with default passwords, Horne said.
It was, he said, not an AI attack but one where bad actors exploited vulnerabilities that have existed for a long time and showed the need for businesses to address the security of operational technology.
Last week, governments and corporations worked on urgent security updates after the AI-assisted discovery of vulnerabilities in a programming language vital to 70% of websites globally.
The two critical flaws identified by AI could allow bad actors to get unauthenticated access to sites which, in theory, could allow them to control a web server remotely without needing a password.
Russia has already attacked critical infrastructure in Europe, according to the UK and European Union member states that said Russia’s FSB security service was behind an attack on Poland’s energy grid in December 2025. If the attack had been successful, 500,000 people could have lost electricity during winter.
In the UK, malicious cyberactivity is costing organisations almost $20 billion (€17.9 billion) every year, the NCSC said. In 2025, the carmaker Jaguar Land Rover suffered more than $260 million (€232 million) in direct losses following a cyberattack which also hit suppliers and dented the UK economy.
“We need every organisation in the UK to take action now. Not only to protect their customers, services and livelihoods, but because cybersecurity is now part of the front-line defence of our nation,” said Anne Keast-Butler, director of GCHQ, Britain’s signals intelligence agency, which the NCSC is part of.
That includes implementing basic but effective cybersecurity measures such as making sure devices are up to date, limiting administrator access to systems and backing up important files and data, the NCSC said.