Chatbots Vulnerable to Hackers: UK Cybersecurity Agency Warns Against Prompt Injection Attacks on AI

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) in the UK has raised an alarm about a growing threat to chatbots. Hackers are exploiting a weakness known as 'prompt injection' to make chatbots behave unpredictably. Imagine typing something innocent, but the chatbot responds with offensive or confidential information – that's what it means.

The current generation of large language models (LLMs) is vulnerable to these types of inputs, which could have worrying consequences, the agency says. As these models are being used more to share information across different services and apps, the risk of these prompt injection attacks is going up.

Data Breaches Soar in 2023

New data from VPN provider Surfshark is painting a horrifying picture of data breaches in 2023. The number of data breaches worldwide shot up by a staggering 156% from Q1 to Q2 this year. A total of 110.8 million accounts were leaked in the second quarter of the year and to put it into perspective, that's 855 accounts exposed every single minute.

Shockingly, nearly half of these breaches happened in the United States. Russia, Spain, France, and Turkey were the other countries hit hardest by data breaches.

And the costs are rising too. IBM's latest report, `Cost of Data Breach 2023,` reveals that the global average cost of a data breach has gone up by 15% in the last three years. In response, 51% of organizations are now planning to beef up their cybersecurity efforts.

Simple Steps to Stay Safe

According to Microsoft, following some basic cyber hygiene can protect against a whopping 98% of attacks. These are steps every organization should adopt:

1. Use phishing-resistant multifactor authentication.

2. Apply zero trust principles.

3. Keep your anti-malware tools updated.

4. Stay on top of systems and software updates.

5. Protect your data.

By taking these precautions, you can help keep your digital world safe from cyber threats. Remember, it's always better to be safe than sorry.