Spy turned startup CEO: 'The WannaCry of AI will happen'

Interview "In my past life, it would take us 360 days to develop an amazing zero day," Zafran Security CEO Sanaz Yashar said.

She's talking about the 15 years she spent working as a spy - she prefers "hacking architect" - inside the Israel Defense Forces' elite cyber group, Unit 8200. 

"Now, the volume and speed is changing so much that for the first time ever, we have a negative time-to-exploit, meaning it takes less than a day to see vulnerabilities being exploited, being weaponized before they were patched," Yashar told The Register. "That is not something you used to see."

The reason: AI. This technology isn't helping criminals develop novel or more sophisticated attack chains entirely without humans in the loop, she said. "But AI is helping the threat actors do more, and faster," according to Yashar - and the more and faster is what worries her.

As a teen ...