ASD Says AI Is Reducing Effort Needed for Cyberattacks

Wider access to artificial intelligence is making it less demanding to target Australian government, businesses, individuals and critical infrastructure, according to the Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre. Its assessment says AI could assist malicious actors in identifying weaknesses, developing exploits and conducting attacks on a greater scale.

The assessment forms part of the centre’s Annual Cyber Threat Report for 2025-26, published on October 26, 2026. The centre said AI strengthens threats that already exist, rather than introducing new categories of cyber threat.

Defensive applications also feature in the report. According to the centre, AI has potential uses in detecting vulnerabilities, checking for unusual activity and improving the response to cybersecurity incidents.

Across the 2025-26 financial year, the centre handled more than 1,500 cybersecurity incidents. According to its report, that response workload was 20% higher than in the preceding financial year and 36% higher than five years earlier.

Critical infrastructure accounted for 154 of the incidents handled, or 10% of the total. That figure was almost 7% lower than the previous year’s count, according to the centre. The report does not classify those 154 incidents as a tally of attacks involving AI.

A separate measure covers notifications about cyber activity considered potentially malicious, rather than cases requiring an incident response. The centre said it notified entities more than 4,400 times during 2025-26, an 80% increase over 2024-25. The breakdown included more than 2,200 individual notifications, alongside collective notifications that reached over 2,100 entities.

The report also describes state-sponsored cyber activity, without specifically attributing it to AI. According to the centre, Australian organisations remained targets of state-sponsored actors, with critical-infrastructure operators, businesses and individuals among those targeted. Obtaining sensitive information or information not available publicly was the principal purpose identified in the report. The centre also said some state actors seek access to networks for potential intelligence collection or disruption in the future.

* This article is based on publicly available information at the time of writing.