A 17-year-old launches a cyberattack with the help of AI

The news has generated an international stir: a 17-year-old Japanese student has been accused of carrying out a cyberattack using artificial intelligence to plan and execute part of the offensive. We are not dealing with a programming expert or a member of an organized criminal group, but rather an adolescent who, with the help of AI tools, has been able to execute actions that previously required advanced knowledge and months of preparation.

This case is not only surprising because of the attacker's age, but also because of what it reveals about the new cybercrime landscape: anyone, with the right tools, can multiply their attack capacity to levels that were previously unthinkable.

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_{An incident that reveals a profound change}

Behind the media impact, this case brings to the table a reality that many still underestimate: artificial intelligence is democratizing cybercrime. With the help of generative models, autonomous assistants, and tools that automate every step of the attack, it is no longer necessary to know how to program or understand network protocols to cause damage on a large scale. What once required serious technical skills is now just a prompt away.

No noise, no expert profiles, no barriers to entry.

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_{What should really concern us}

The importance of this case is not in its spectacularity, but in what it reveals.
The technical barrier has fallen: what used to require programming, understanding networks or knowing vulnerabilities can now be generated with prompts or automatic assistants. This means that a single attacker - even if they have little experience - can launch multiple simultaneous attacks with little human intervention.

In addition, automation makes traceability difficult: when AI generates, modifies and executes patterns, identifying who did what, from where and with what intention becomes much more complex.

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And the most worrying thing: many companies continue to imagine the “expert hacker”, while real attacks can already come from unexpected profiles, even from minors with access to tools that multiply their capacity.

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^{Why this is a warning sign for organizations}

This case must be interpreted as a clear message: the risk is no longer only in advanced actors, but in the multiplied capacity of common actors thanks to AI.

The classic mental model of the “professional hacker” has become obsolete.
Today, any organization can be attacked by someone who doesn't know how to program, doesn't understand infrastructure, and yet has the ability to automate a complete attack.

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The defense needs to be updated as quickly as the threat.

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_{The next generation of attackers is here. And your defense?}

At Apolo Cybersecurity, we help companies to anticipate and mitigate this new type of risk by combining technical auditing, simulations, threat intelligence and training adapted to the reality of AI.

If the threat has changed, so must your defense.