The paper explores the unique transformative potential, challenges and limitations of AI powered by large language models (LLM) in offensive security.
SEATTLE, Aug. 7, 2024–(Business)–Black Hat Conference (Las Vegas) – The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining standards, certifications, and best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment, today released the Using AI for Offensive Security report. The report, produced by the AI Technology and Risk Working Group, explores the transformative potential of large language model (LLM)-powered AI by examining its integration into offensive security. Specifically, the report addresses current challenges and showcases AI capabilities across five security phases: reconnaissance, scanning, vulnerability analysis, exploitation, and reporting.
“AI is here to transform offensive security, but it is not a silver bullet. Because AI solutions are limited by the scope of their training data and algorithms, it is essential to understand the latest developments in AI and leverage it as an augmentation tool for human security professionals,” said Adam Lundqvist, one of the paper’s lead authors. “By embracing AI, training teams on its capabilities and risks, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement, organizations can significantly enhance their defensive capabilities and secure a competitive advantage in cybersecurity.”
Among the report's key findings:
Security teams face a shortage of skilled professionals, increasingly complex and dynamic environments, and the need to balance automation and manual testing.
AI, particularly through AI experts and AI agents, offers significant capabilities in offensive security, including data analysis, code and script generation, realistic attack scenario planning, reasoning, and tool orchestration. These capabilities can help automate reconnaissance, improve scanning, assess vulnerabilities, generate comprehensive reports, and even exploit vulnerabilities autonomously.
Leveraging AI in offensive security leads to increased scalability, efficiency, speed, more sophisticated vulnerability detection, and ultimately an improved overall security posture.
While AI solutions are promising, they cannot revolutionize offensive security today. Continuous AI experimentation is needed to find and implement effective solutions. This requires creating an environment that encourages learning and development, where team members can use AI tools and techniques to grow their skills.
The story continues
As the report explains, the use of AI in offensive security presents unique opportunities but also faces limitations. Managing massive datasets and ensuring accurate vulnerability detection are significant challenges that can be addressed through technological advancements and best practices. However, limitations such as code window constraints in AI models require careful planning and mitigation today. To overcome these challenges, the report authors recommend that organizations integrate AI to automate tasks and augment human capabilities; maintain human oversight to validate AI outputs, improve quality, and ensure technical advantage; and implement robust governance, risk, and compliance frameworks and controls to ensure the safe and ethical use of AI.
“While AI offers great potential to enhance offensive security capabilities, it is important to recognize the challenges that may arise from its use,” said Kirti Chopra, lead author of the paper. “Developing appropriate mitigation strategies, such as those addressed in this report, can help ensure the safe and effective integration of AI into security frameworks.”
Download the use of artificial intelligence for offensive security.
About Cloud Security Alliance
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment. CSA leverages the subject matter expertise of industry practitioners, associations, governments, and its corporate and individual members to deliver cloud security research, education, training, certifications, events, and products. CSA’s activities, knowledge, and extensive network benefit the entire cloud community—from providers and customers to governments, businesses, and the insurance industry—and provide a forum where diverse parties can work together to create and maintain a trusted cloud ecosystem. For more information, visit our website at www.cloudsecurityalliance.org and follow us on Twitter @cloudsa.
You can view the original press release on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240807972332/en/
Contacts
Christina Rundquist
ZAG Communications for CSA
christina@zagcommunications.com
