‘Black October’ shows how criminals use AI to cause real-world chaos | Latest Tech News
The world has been plunged into a cyber-security disaster, identified as “Black October,” which uncovered how susceptible a lot of the world’s online infrastructure is.
Major security incidents, hacks and flaws across the globe have shown how simply online data saved by governments, corporations and people will be hacked.
“Artificial intelligence is dramatically accelerating the discovery of software weaknesses [and] vulnerabilities and criminals can exploit them before a government or a company can even have enough time to respond,” Scott Schober, CEO of New Jersey-based Berkeley Varitronics Systems, told The Post.
“They know they’re ahead of the curve. Governments can’t keep up.”
Scott Schober warns against people getting into their personal info into AI assistants. Courtesy of Scott Schober
He added that criminals don’t even have to be particularly technical to use AI nefariously.
“AI can write the scripts for you. You don’t have to be a programmer anymore,” Schober added. “It’s like getting a master’s degree without attending a day of college.”
One of the most major incidents was when severe flaws in PHP — the programming code that serves as the spine on which 70% of the world’s web websites are constructed — have been discovered, which might have allowed hackers to break into servers and take control without a password.
Other “Black October” incidents have included malicious software program distributed through LiteLLM, a software used by AI builders, and many other corporations speeding to repair flaws in their programming.
The threats posed to the real world are severe. For instance, cyber attackers can strive to disrupt or poison water provides, cut off electrical energy or overload sewage processing plants. This is especially harmful in smaller municipalities without devoted cybersecurity groups.
Seven states have confirmed makes an attempt to cyber sabotage water plants: New Jersey, Oregon, Minnesota, Michigan, South Dakota, Alabama and Georgia.
More than 30 Minnesota water systems have been attacked in July, while a Georgia assault led to a boil-water advisory in one county, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Iran-linked group CyberAv3ngers claimed accountability for the marketing campaign. Iran-linked hackers also focused Pennsylvania water infrastructure in 2023, CSIS famous.
Meanwhile, one of the most profitable ransomware assaults against the US happened in in May 2021, and resulted in Colonial Pipeline shutting down its oil system, disrupting a major provide of fuel to the East Coast, which they paid $4.4 million to Russian hackers to resolve.
“It’s a concern for everybody because it affects economies, people and their livelihoods and public safety,” Schober added.
The homepage of the National Cyber Security Centre web site seen on a smartphone in London on Oct. 22, 2026. REUTERS
Calling for stronger oversight and worldwide coordination, he added: “There will be havoc otherwise. There will be problems, and it will affect humanity.”
On the optimistic aspect, non-criminals are also utilizing AI to establish issues and flaws and “plug” them before they’re hacked.
In an Oct. 8 assertion, Anthropic said six months of AI scanning had flagged more than 29,000 potential vulnerabilities. However, people had manually reviewed and fixed only about 6,000.
“We remain bottlenecked on our human capacity to validate these findings,” the company said at the time.
A security advisory is displayed on the PHP web site on a laptop in Guernica, Spain, on Oct. 22, 2026, the day after authorities web sites across Europe went darkish. REUTERS
The main concern is a “vulnpocalypse” a time period used by specialists to describe a backlog of weaknesses growing quicker than defenders can assess and repair them.
“It shows that it’s like a cat and mouse game, but it’s at a much faster pace now,” Schober added.
Meanwhile, the underworld is organized: hacking and stealing info, personal particulars and other materials, cross-referencing it with what’s obtainable on the web and then promoting it on the darkish web.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff during the keynote tackle at Salesforce’s Dreamforce convention in San Francisco on Sept. 15, 2026. Getty Images
Most of the US’s greatest corporations have been hacked and had delicate data stolen from them, at some level. Among the most extreme have been hacks of UnitedHealth, Facebook, Microsoft, Ticketmaster, Yahoo and National Public Data — one of the most important databasing corporations which had 2.7 billion information stolen in 2024.
AI also helps type stolen information and connects scattered particulars of potential victims into onto one place, making fraud and extortion more focused, according to Schober.
People’s non-public chats with AI have also been stolen on a large scale.
A Claude emblem seen on a smartphone. Anthropic has come under fire for telling the US Department of Defense that it might not permit Claude to be used to surveil American residents or help autonomous weapons. Christopher Sadowski for NY Post
Schober urges customers to restrict what they share, saying to keep passwords, Social Security numbers, bank particulars and delicate household info out of chatbot conversations. Users ought to always verify and paperwork they add to the web for non-public particulars too.
For account security, he recommends utilizing long, distinctive passwords and different passwords for every web site, as nicely as multifactor authentication.
European authorities have suggested companies utilizing PHP software program to coordinate with their internet hosting suppliers, set up updates and take into account isolating any uncovered purposes when rapid repairs are inconceivable.
Schober acknowledged that AI can strengthen defenses as nicely as assaults, but his concern is the criminals are one step forward — and working quicker.
“It’s a tool for good and for bad,” he said.
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