SANS Network Security 2026 - Featured Keynote: Offense at Machine Speed: How AI Is Reshaping the Threat Landscape

This talk begins with a brief examination of recent breach data and the growing ecosystem of attacker tooling available through Dark Web marketplaces and Telegram channels, highlighting where OSINT and cyber threat intelligence teams should focus their monitoring efforts. We will then explore why multi-factor authentication (MFA) bypass attacks continue to succeed despite widespread adoption, examining both the technical and operational factors that make these attacks so effective.

The majority of the presentation will focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its rapidly expanding role in modern offensive security. We will analyze how attackers are leveraging AI to dramatically increase the speed, scale, and sophistication of attacks, while also examining AI systems themselves as an emerging attack surface.

The session will demonstrate how AI can be applied as both a SAST and DAST capability for discovering and exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in web applications, as well as its growing role in binary exploitation. Offensive innovation has historically outpaced defensive adaptation, and the adoption of AI is accelerating this imbalance. This talk provides practical insight into how the threat landscape is evolving and what security professionals must understand to keep pace.

If your next step is capability-building, SEC543: AI-Assisted Source Code Analysis and Exploitation for Penetration Testers teaches you how to map codebases faster, find what scanners miss, and generate validated exploit tooling with AI assistance.