KnowBe4 has announced a prediction that agentic AI ransomware will become a new threat in the near future, recognised on International Anti-Ransomware Day. 

Ransomware demands and payments escalated in 2024, with average payments reaching $2.73 million. International Anti-Ransomware Day serves as a platform to raise awareness globally about the dangers of ransomware and the best practices for mitigating it. 

AI agentic ransomware is a collection of AI bots that perform all the steps necessary to conduct a successful ransomware attack, only faster and better.

The AI-enabled agentic ransomware will gain initial access, analyse the environment, determine how to maximise malicious hacker profits, and implement the attacks. And it will not be just one attack, but a series of escalating attacks to maximise a malicious hacker’s profit.

“We have already seen how AI has been used in hacking for a few years now and the near-term future is best predicted by past behaviour,” said Roger Grimes, data-driven defence evangelist, KnowBe4. “History shows that the bad actors follow about six to 12 months behind what the good actors invent and discover.

“It takes that long for the bad actors to learn what the good actors developed and then figure out not only how to use it maliciously, but place it into existing hacker tools and kits so a broad range of hackers can use them.

“Now is the time to start using agentic AI in cybersecurity defences – before it becomes a true threat.”

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