AI is one of the technologies that will have a greater social and economic impact in the coming years (we are already experiencing). Some studies (PwC, Accenture) estimate this impact at a global scale up to 2030 to be around 16 trillion USD, led by China and the USA.

As expected, everyone is jumping on this bandwagon and the world of cyber security is no exception. But how much reality is in the applicability of AI to cybersecurity? Let’s take a look at the possibilities from both sides of the battlefield: the attacker and the defender.

Machine Learning (ML) techniques can be applied to detect vulnerabilities in software using fuzzing tools. This is done by the attackers and can be done by the developers, preventing vulnerabilities from reaching live environments.

One of the most successful AI recent advances is the ability to automatically generate “credible” text that is hard to distinguish from that written by humans. This technique is being used to generate fake news content in news sites or to comment on social networks.