As AI-enabled attacks become faster and cheaper to launch, WinMagic CEO Thi Nguyen-Huu says organizations need to reduce the security decisions left to users and connect authentication more closely to the protected session that follows.
TORONTO, Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Artificial intelligence has changed the economics of cyberattacks, making convincing lures faster and cheaper to create. IBM reported in July that one in four malicious breaches was AI-enabled, costing organizations an average of about $6 million. Thi Nguyen-Huu, President and CEO of WinMagic, a cybersecurity company focused on endpoint authentication and encryption, points to adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) attacks as a threat he expects to become increasingly significant. In this scenario, the attacker sits between the user and the real service and relays the login as it happens.
Nguyen-Huu calls it the “mother of all attacks,” one that can defeat login methods including passwords, one-time codes, push notifications, and passkeys without breaking them. He says there is nothing to patch or spot because both ends see a login that worked. All it needs is a convincing lure, which AI has made cheaper to create.
According to Proofpoint, almost half of the accounts taken over by attackers had multifactor authentication (MFA) turned on as of December 2024. “You can ask for more, check harder, verify again, none of it helps,” Nguyen-Huu said. “Nothing in the exchange is false. The person is real, the device is real, and the answer to every question is correct.”