An autonomous cyberattack is an attack chain that an AI system can plan, coordinate, or execute with little human direction. Instead of a person manually choosing every step, the model may help with reconnaissance, vulnerability discovery, exploit selection, payload preparation, and follow-on actions such as persistence or data theft. The key idea is autonomy: the machine is not just giving advice, but reducing the amount of human effort needed to carry out offensive work.
This matters because it can make attacks faster, cheaper, and easier to scale. A capable system may help attackers probe targets continuously, adapt to defenses, or combine small findings into a larger intrusion path. Defenders respond by limiting tool access, isolating models in sandboxes, logging and reviewing actions, and requiring human approval for risky steps. Defense-in-depth is important because one control failure should not let an AI system turn into an operational attacker.