AI-driven attacks on educational organizations in Latin America and Africa


Kaspersky Threat Research has uncovered attacks on educational organizations in Latin America and Africa in which attackers used artificial intelligence to help direct activity inside compromised networks. Researchers traced reconnaissance, credential theft, movement between computers and data collection, including activity that compromised highly privileged administrator accounts.

The attackers used CyberStrikeAI, an open-source penetration-testing framework that combines a command-and-control system with a large language model. In this architecture, a human operator sets objectives, while the model can select tools, generate commands and analyze execution results. An implant installed on the compromised machine executes those commands and returns the results to the attackers’ server. Kaspersky observed the attacks between September and October 2026.

Read more…
Source:  Kaspersky 


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • BiBi attacks Israel: Pro-Hamas hackers use new malware to attack Israeli companies

    March 3, 2024

    A wave of new cyberattacks from pro-Hamas hackers using the BiBi malware has been identified in Israel in recent days. This involves four new variants of malware that are able to evade antivirus engines, according to the VirusTotal platform. The BiBi malware is a wiper-type malware designed to erase and corrupt data. Unlike other types of ...

  • North Carolina: Around £2.1 million has been stolen from the housing agency as the US Secret Service is investigating

    March 3, 2024

    It is a little-known clothing firm based out of an anonymous residential street in Scotland’s biggest city, with overflowing bags and boxes of rubbish piled up outside its front door. But a Glasgow company is at the centre of a multi-million pound fraud investigation by the US Secret Service into millions of public money that was ...

  • 20 million Cutout.Pro AI service users hit by massive data breach

    March 2, 2024

    AI-powered photo and video editing platform Cutout.Pro has become the latest victim to what has turned out to be a pretty sizeable data breach. Personal information relating to as many as 20 million users, including email addresses, hashed and salted passwords, IP addresses, and names has been exposed, prompting significant privacy and security concerns. Read more… Source: MSN ...

  • LockBit cyberattack: Fulton County refuses to pay ransom as deadline passes

    March 1, 2024

    Fulton County leaders say they have not paid any ransom to the criminal group claiming responsibility for the cyberattack that affected several of the county’s agencies. The group LockBit had set a deadline of 8:49 a.m. on Thursday for Fulton County to pay the ransom or risk having stolen data leaked onto the dark web. This ...

  • US prescription market hamstrung for 9 days (so far) by ransomware attack

    March 1, 2024

    Nine days after a Russian-speaking ransomware syndicate took down the biggest US health care payment processor, pharmacies, health care providers, and patients were still scrambling to fill prescriptions for medicines, many of which are lifesaving. On Thursday, UnitedHealth Group accused a notorious ransomware gang known both as AlphV and Black Cat of hacking its subsidiary, Optum. ...

  • Here Come the AI Worms

    March 1, 2024

    In a demonstration of the risks of connected, autonomous AI ecosystems, a group of researchers have created one of what they claim are the first generative AI worms—which can spread from one system to another, potentially stealing data or deploying malware in the process. “It basically means that now you have the ability to conduct or ...