AI doubles Chinese cyberattacks as DeepSeek's low guardrails lower the barrier for hackers
teamt5 reports ai usage doubled chinese state-backed attacks, with deepseek favored for malware due to weak guardrails. taiwanese firms face more automated, efficient intrusions as open models rapidly close capability gaps with western frontiers.
chinese state-backed groups, including grimfengxi and huapi, have more than doubled their utilization of ai for cyberattacks since 2023, specifically leveraging deepseek to generate exploit code and map domains because of its low safety guardrails. teamt5 observed hackers also using chatgpt for signal database decryption and anthropic’s claude code to navigate corporate systems, demonstrating a widespread adoption of generative ai for malicious purposes. while the uk ai safety institute notes open models still trail western frontiers like claude mythos in autonomous attack capabilities, the gap is closing rapidly. this trend threatens taiwanese organizations with higher-volume, more efficient spear-phishing and malware campaigns, forcing defenders to adapt to ai-augmented threats.