AI to defend critical infrastructure

This post details a partnership with PNNL to explore AI for critical infrastructure cybersecurity defense. It describes using Claude to emulate cyber attacks on a simulated water treatment plant, significantly accelerating adversary emulation from weeks to hours. A key technical detail is Claude's resourcefulness in bypassing a Windows User Account Control (UAC) security feature when a pre-defined tool failed, demonstrating emergent problem-solving capabilities in a cybersecurity context. The work involved developing a 'scaffold' for Claude to translate natural language prompts into attack chains using pre-defined code-based tools.