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:

  • Password manager Dashlane says hackers stole some customers’ password vaults

    June 2, 2026

    Password manager maker Dashlane says hackers have obtained at least a dozen encrypted vaults used for storing customer passwords during a weekend cyberattack. The company said on its website that hackers brute-forced the company’s two-factor authentication system, granting the hackers access to about 20 customer accounts. By defeating its two-factor mechanism, the hackers were able to download a copy of ...

  • Operation FlutterBridge: macOS Malvertising Campaign Spreads New FlutterShell Backdoor

    June 2, 2026

    Palo Alto Unit 42 are tracking an increasingly widespread malvertising campaign targeting macOS. This campaign appears to be the next stage of a previous campaign known as JSCoreRunner, which was first identified in August 2025. In recent months, the financially-motivated attackers behind these campaigns transitioned from delivering standard adware, to delivering adware with full backdoor ...

  • Russian spy agency says foreign spies turned officials’ smartphones into surveillance devices

    June 2, 2026

    Russia’s domestic spy agency says it has uncovered a sprawling foreign espionage operation that allegedly turned the smartphones of senior Russian officials into pocket-sized surveillance devices, though it has so far offered little in the way of evidence. In a statement Tuesday, the Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed foreign intelligence agencies implanted malware on the mobile devices ...

  • Fake virus alerts are invading mobile games

    June 2, 2026

    Sometimes it happens. You’re happily playing a game on your phone or laptop when suddenly alarms pop up out of nowhere: “Your device is infected!” “Your iCloud is full!” “Your account is restricted for watching porn!” Some games can be played for free if you agree to watch ads, and in others you can get extra lives, perks, or ...

  • Palo Alto VPN bug graduates from advisory to active exploitation

    June 1, 2026

    Palo Alto customers are being been told to patch yet another internet-facing security flaw after researchers caught attackers bypassing GlobalProtect authentication and gaining unauthorized VPN access. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-0257, affects PAN-OS deployments using GlobalProtect authentication override cookies under specific configurations. Read more… Source:  The Register Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter The latest cyber security news and ...

  • Grand Theft Auto V cheat service gets hacked, exposing thousands of gamers

    June 1, 2026

    Atlas Menu, a cheat service for popular online video game Grand Theft Auto V, has been hacked, according to data breach notification website Have I Been Pwned. The stolen data included users’ email addresses, usernames, scrambled passwords, IP addresses, and support tickets, according to Have I Been Pwned, which said almost 64,000 accounts were part of the ...