State-backed cyberattacks, AI deepfakes, and more: Experts reveal UK election cyber threats
Disinformation is expected to be among the top cyber risks for elections in 2024.
Andrew Brookes | Image Source | Getty Images
Britain is expected to face a barrage of state-backed cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns as it heads to the polls in 2024 — and artificial intelligence is a key risk, according to cyber experts who spoke to CNBC.
Brits will vote on May 2 in local elections, and a general election is expected in the second half of this year, although British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has not yet committed to a date.
The votes come as the country faces a range of problems including a cost-of-living crisis and stark divisions over immigration and asylum.
“With most U.K. citizens voting at polling stations on the day of the election, I expect the majority of cybersecurity risks to emerge in the months leading up to the day itself,” Todd McKinnon, CEO of identity security firm Okta, told CNBC via email.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
In 2016, the U.S. presidential election and U.K. Brexit vote were both found to have been disrupted by disinformation shared on social media platforms, allegedly by Russian state-affiliated groups, although Moscow denies these claims.
State actors have since made routine attacks in various countries to manipulate the outcome of elections, according to cyber experts.
Meanwhile, last week, the U.K. alleged that Chinese state-affiliated hacking group APT 31 attempted to access U.K. lawmakers’ email accounts, but said such attempts were unsuccessful. London imposed sanctions on Chinese individuals and a technology firm in Wuhan believed to be a front for APT 31.
The U.S., Australia, and New Zealand followed with their own sanctions. China denied allegations of state-sponsored hacking, calling them “groundless.”
Cybercriminals utilizing AI
Cybersecurity experts expect malicious actors to interfere in the upcoming elections in several ways — not least through disinformation, which is expected to be even worse this year due to the widespread use of artificial intelligence.
Synthetic images, videos and audio generated using computer graphics, simulation methods and AI — commonly referred to as “deep fakes” — will be a common occurrence as it becomes easier for people to create them, say experts.
“Nation-state actors and cybercriminals are likely to utilize AI-powered identity-based attacks like phishing, social engineering, ransomware, and supply chain compromises to target politicians, campaign staff, and election-related institutions,” Okta’s McKinnon added.
“We’re also sure to see an influx of AI and bot-driven content generated by threat actors to push out misinformation at an even greater scale than we’ve seen in previous election cycles.”
The cybersecurity community has called for heightened awareness of this type of AI-generated misinformation, as well as international cooperation to mitigate the risk of such malicious activity.
Top election risk
Adam Meyers, head of counter adversary operations for cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, said AI-powered disinformation is a top risk for elections in 2024.
“Right now, generative AI can be used for harm or for good and so we see both applications every day increasingly adopted,” Meyers told CNBC.
China, Russia and Iran are highly likely to conduct misinformation and disinformation operations against various global elections with the help of tools like generative AI, according to Crowdstrike’s latest annual threat report.
“This democratic process is extremely fragile,” Meyers told CNBC. “When you start looking at how hostile nation states like Russia or China or Iran can leverage generative AI and some of the newer technology to craft messages and to use deep fakes to create a story or a narrative that is compelling for people to accept, especially when people already have this kind of confirmation bias, it’s extremely dangerous.”
A key problem is that AI is reducing the barrier to entry for criminals looking to exploit people online. This has already happened in the form of scam emails that have been crafted using easily accessible AI tools like ChatGPT.
Hackers are also developing more advanced — and personal — attacks by training AI models on our own data available on social media, according to Dan Holmes, a fraud prevention specialist at regulatory technology firm Feedzai.
“You can train those voice AI models very easily … through exposure to social [media],” Holmes told CNBC in an interview. “It’s [about] getting that emotional level of engagement and really coming up with something creative.”
In the context of elections, a fake AI-generated audio clip of Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party, abusing party staffers was posted to the social media platform X in October 2023. The post racked up as many as 1.5 million views, according to fact correction charity Full Fact.
It’s just one example of many deepfakes that have cybersecurity experts worried about what’s to come as the U.K. approaches elections later this year.
Elections a test for tech giants
Deep fake technology is becoming a lot more advanced, however. And for many tech companies, the race to beat them is now about fighting fire with fire.
“Deepfakes went from being a theoretical thing to being very much live in production today,” Mike Tuchen, CEO of Onfido, told CNBC in an interview last year.
“There’s a cat and mouse game now where it’s ‘AI vs. AI’ — using AI to detect deepfakes and mitigating the impact for our customers is the big battle right now.”
Cyber experts say it’s becoming harder to tell what’s real — but there can be some signs that content is digitally manipulated.
AI uses prompts to generate text, images and video, but it doesn’t always get it right. So for example, if you’re watching an AI-generated video of a dinner, and the spoon suddenly disappears, that’s an example of an AI flaw.
“We’ll certainly see more deepfakes throughout the election process but an easy step we can all take is verifying the authenticity of something before we share it,” Okta’s McKinnon added.
The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.
Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.
The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.
Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.
The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.
“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”
Read the full Bloomberg story here.
— CNBC’s Samantha Subin contributed to this report.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Alphabet‘s stock gained 3% Friday after signaling strong growth in its search and advertising businesses amid a competitive artificial intelligence environment and uncertain macro backdrop.
“GOOGL‘s pace of GenAI product roll-out is accelerating with multiple encouraging signals,” wrote Morgan Stanley‘s Brian Nowak. “Macro uncertainty still exists but we remain [overweight] given GOOGL’s still strong relative position and improving pace of GenAI enabled product roll-out.”
The search giant posted earnings of $2.81 per share on $90.23 billion in revenues. That topped the $89.12 billion in sales and $2.01 in EPS expected by LSEG analysts. Revenues grew 12% year-over-year and ahead of the 10% anticipated by Wall Street.
Net income rose 46% to $34.54 billion, or $2.81 per share. That’s up from $23.66 billion, or $1.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Alphabet said the figure included $8 billion in unrealized gains on its nonmarketable equity securities connected to its investment in a private company.
Adjusted earnings, excluding that gain, were $2.27 per share, according to LSEG, and topped analyst expectations.
Alphabet shares have pulled back about 16% this year as it battles volatility spurred by mounting trade war fears and worries that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs could crush the global economy. That would make it more difficult for Alphabet to potentially acquire infrastructure for data centers powering AI models as it faces off against competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to develop largely language models.
During Thursday’s call with investors, Alphabet suggested that it’s too soon to tally the total impact of tariffs. However, Google’s business chief Philipp Schindler said that ending the de minimis trade exemption in May, which created a loophole benefitting many Chinese e-commerce retailers, could create a “slight headwind” for the company’s ads business, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The loophole allows shipments under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free.
Despite this backdrop, Alphabet showed steady growth in its advertising and search business, reporting $66.89 billion in revenues for its advertising unit. That reflected 8.5% growth from the year-ago period. The company reported $8.93 billion in advertising revenue for its YouTube business, shy of an $8.97 billion estimate from StreetAccount.
Alphabet’s “Search and other” unit rose 9.8% to $50.7 billion, up from $46.16 billion last year. The company said that its AI Overviews tool used in its Google search results page has accumulated 1.5 billion monthly users from a billion in October.
Bank of America analyst Justin Post said that Wall Street is underestimating the upside potential and “monetization ramp” from this tool and cloud demand fueled by AI.
“The strong 1Q search performance, along with constructive comments on Gemini [large language model] performance and [AI Overviews] adoption could help alleviate some investor concerns on AI competition,” Post wrote in a note.
WATCH: Gemini delivering well for Google, says Check Capital’s Chris Ballard
CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.
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