AI accelerates global cybersecurity crisis, Check Point CTO warns at TAU Cyber Week - interview

Most of the internet is sitting on a ticking time bomb of outdated software, with artificial intelligence rapidly accelerating the countdown, Check Point chief technology officer Jonathan Zanger warned in an interview on the sidelines of Tel Aviv University's Cyber Week on Tuesday.The core of the crisis is aging software infrastructure that remains a prime target for hackers, Zanger explained, pointing specifically to the severe threat posed by PHP-to-shell vulnerabilities, which he said affect roughly 70% of websites worldwide."In terms of vulnerability type, it's a very severe one," he said. "It allows unauthenticated remote control execution, which means that anyone can run it, and the potential damage is the largest possible because it's not just in the service – it's actually taking over the system."Traditional security patches can no longer keep paceThe integration of artificial intelligence into cyberattacks has fundamentally changed how quickly hackers can exploit security vulnerabilities, Zanger explained.Just a few years ago, the median time between the public disclosure of a vulnerability and its exploitation by attackers was three to four months, he said.That window has now shrunk to just days. Zanger cited a recent example involving Amazon Web Services (AWS), in which attackers began exploiting a vulnerability before an official security patch was released.Because companies cannot manually respond at the same speed as automated systems, traditional security…