Overview
- The National Cyber Security Centre raised the threat on Tuesday and said it is highly likely the UK will face an AI‑powered ransomware or malware attack on critical national infrastructure by 2028.
- The agency judged China the state actor best positioned to use AI against UK targets and said Russia and Iran are also conducting sustained malicious cyber activity.
- Officials warned that AI is not inventing new classes of attack but is making it much faster and cheaper to find and chain together existing vulnerabilities, a risk highlighted by recent AI‑assisted discovery of critical flaws in a widely used programming language and hacks on supermarket refrigeration systems.
- GCHQ, MI5 and the NCSC are coordinating emergency patching with industry and urging basic steps such as systematic software updates, limiting administrator access, regular backups, tighter supply‑chain checks, and closer early‑warning links with model developers.
- The NCSC estimates malicious cyber activity costs UK organisations about $20 billion a year and said failures to act could cause real harm to services and livelihoods, including lost food supplies, outages, and higher costs that would push organisations to invest in skills and resilience.