AI cyber attacks are changing the threat landscape for MSPs.
The rapid advancement of AI makes it easier for less-skilled attackers to do more than they could before. By generating code, modifying payloads, debugging errors, or creating fake sites, they’re able to launch attacks even without fully understanding how things work behind the scenes.
In a recent webinar, Is the Era of the Script Kiddie Back? Blackpoint Cyber Chief Security and Trust Officer Wilfredo Santiago, Cyber Head of Adversary Pursuit Erin Whitmore, and Empath Co-founder Wes Spencer explored how AI is changing the old script kiddie problem.
This article breaks down the bigger ideas from the conversation, so MSPs can understand how AI cybersecurity threats are evolving and what stronger defense should look like.
Ten years ago, a script kiddie was largely a nuisance. They downloaded pre-built exploits, pointed them at a target, and hoped for a hit. If a payload failed or a network configuration stalled their progress, the attack ended. They lacked the technical depth to pivot.
Today, AI acts as their senior engineer.
Attackers no longer need to know how to write clean code from scratch or understand the underlying architecture of their target. When an exploit fails, they prompt an AI model to analyze the error, rewrite the payload, and suggest a new vector.
This fundamentally changes the math of a breach. An attacker who was previously limited to copying someone else’s work can now rapidly generate, iterate, and launch customized attacks. The resulting code might be messy, and the attack might be incredibly noisy, but the barrier to persistence has been completely removed.
AI gives lower-skill attackers a way around the parts that used to stop them. The result is a lower barrier to entry and more people capable of launching real attempts.
The good news is that AI-generated attacks are rarely masterpieces.
The webinar touched on a few examples of AI-generated malware that looked advanced on the surface but fell apart under analysis. The code revealed how little attackers usually understood. Analysts found tutorial-style comments, hard-coded command-and-control (C2) addresses, decorative headers, mixed languages, and even calls to nonexistent functions.
But sloppy does not mean harmless.
Will compared the threat to that of American professional basketball player Steph Curry shooting threes: if you put up enough shots, eventually one will land. AI creates the same mathematical problem for defenders. Attackers don’t need perfect, elegant code. They need one payload to hit the right user or device at the wrong time.
The risk scales this way. AI allows an amateur to turn one failed payload into a dozen new variants in seconds. The primary threat is pure volume.
Because of this volume, static signatures and known file hashes can only take defenders so far.
If AI makes launching cyber attacks easier, MSPs must operate under a new baseline assumption: more attempts will reach their clients.
As the examples discussed in the webinar proved, these attempts aren't necessarily advanced. They often leave a trail of clumsy clues. The problem is that MSPs are defending high-stakes environments where missing even one of those sloppy clues can trigger a breach.
Because of this, relying on static defenses such as blocking known file hashes or familiar malware names is no longer sufficient. The speakers continuously returned to one critical theme: behavior. Defenders must ask operational questions. How did the payload arrive? What process is executed next? Whose identity was compromised? Did a device suddenly run a PowerShell script at 2:00 AM, drop a cluster of suspicious files, or communicate with infrastructure it normally ignores?
Behavioral visibility is critical because their risk is exponentially higher than a single enterprise. MSPs are managing a massive, interconnected attack surface. If RMM access, global admin credentials, service accounts, or tenant relationships are under-monitored, they can quickly expand the blast radius of a single attack, affecting dozens of clients.
MSPs must fully operationalize defense and require deep visibility across endpoint behavior, cloud activity, and identity usage. Just as importantly, they need strict segmentation to ensure that one compromised client does not become a systemic failure for the entire MSP. And they need incident response planning in place before the chaos starts.
But above all, they need people who know what to do.
Near the end of the webinar, Wes made a crucial point: a playbook is useless if the MSP team and the client don’t actually know how to run it. True security is ensuring the humans behind the screen understand the signals, know the processes, and can execute their roles without hesitation when an alert fires.
AI-generated attacks are evolving rapidly, but MSPs are far from helpless. Ultimately, effective defense comes down to operational readiness: deep visibility, hardened identity protection, behavioral detection, and a team that knows exactly how to respond when an alert fires.
For the full breakdown, watch the joint webinar from Blackpoint Cyber and Empath: Is the Era of the Script Kiddie Back?
Ready to equip your technicians for these high-stakes AI cybersecurity conversations? Explore Empath’s resources on cybersecurity, AI enablement, and service delivery.
And if you are thinking about how to equip your clients too, start exploring how MSPs can make client cybersecurity training a more structured, repeatable part of the service you deliver.