Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to carry out cyberattacks, making them faster, more precise and harder to detect, Lithuania's National Cyber Security Centre has warned.
The warning comes in the centre's 2025 Cyber Threats Report, compiled with international partners, which found that AI is enabling both criminal groups and state-sponsored actors to carry out more sophisticated and large-scale attacks.
The technology allows attackers to gather information on targets more efficiently, craft convincing phishing emails and exploit security vulnerabilities more rapidly.
The report also highlights a shift in ransomware tactics, with hackers increasingly targeting cloud services and software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms, where critical data is stored and day-to-day operations take place, rather than focusing solely on internal networks.
Of 5,418 recorded cyber incidents in 2025, two types of attack accounted for more than 84% of cases. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which overwhelm systems with traffic to knock them offline, made up 44% of incidents, while ransomware, in which attackers encrypt a victim's data and demand payment for its release, accounted for 40%.
