Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: Claudia-Alecsandra Gabrian
Author-Email: claudiaalecsandra@yahoo.com
Author-Workplace-Name: Babeș-Bolyai University
Title: Noile provocări în ecosistemul de criminalitate cibernetică
Abstract: The current cyber threat landscape can be influenced by geopolitical dynamics
that can lead to substantial challenges. Many organized cyber criminals continue to
develop their threat operations to execute high-impact attacks by extorting ransoms,
disrupting governments, critical services, and exposing sensitive data. This article aims to
identify in which manner the ransomware groups are expected to explore new skills and
how they can integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their attacks. Another purpose is to
identify how they can exploit global events and how the attacks in 2023 can be connected
in 2024. The cybercriminal group that was chosen for this research is LockBit ransomware
because according to the statistics from 2023, it is the most prolific cybercriminal
ransomware group. Even though the main focus of this article is LockBit, there is one
exception, because LockBit was disrupted by the FBI in February 2024 and another
purpose is to identify how they can continue their attacks after the disruption. The main
results are that cybercriminals use AI malware to execute more highly developed
cyberattacks shortly and 2024 can be a year where ransomware attacks can predominate
through new LLM models. This paper's main conclusions are that cybercriminals continue
to launch sophisticated ransomware attacks, and they can target global events, for
 example: elections in the US, European Union, Olympic games, and the current military
conflicts can represent significant opportunities for cyber actors.
Classification-JEL: F52, K42, O33
Keywords: ransomware, artificial intelligence, cyberattacks, LockBit, geopolitical landscape
Journal: Intelligence și cultura de securitate
Pages: 25-40
Volume: 3
Issue: 1
Year: 2024
File-URL: https://www.animv.ro/RePEc/mvn/incsec/ICS_1_2024_3_25-40.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:mvn:incsec:v:3:y:2024:i:1:p:25-40