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:

  • ‘Unprecedented’ DNS Hijacking Attacks Linked to Iran

    January 10, 2019

    The attacks, targeting several countries to redirect traffic and harvest credentials, have been linked to Iran. A wave of DNS hijacking attacks targeting victims in North America, Europe, Middle East and North Africa have been linked to Iran. The attacks, which have been ongoing over the past two years, have had “a high degree of success” ...

  • New tool automates phishing attacks that bypass 2FA

    January 9, 2019

    A new penetration testing tool published at the start of the year by a security researcher can automate phishing attacks with an ease never seen before and can even blow through login operations for accounts protected by two-factor authentication (2FA). Named Modlishka –the English pronunciation of the Polish word for mantis– this new tool was created ...

  • Ransomware MongoLock Immediately Deletes Files, Formats Backup Drives

    January 8, 2019

    We have been following a new wave of MongoLock ransomware attacks that immediately deletes files upon infection instead of encrypting it, and further scans for other available folders and drives for file deletion. In the wild since December 2018, the ransomware demands a payment of 0.1 bitcoin from victims within 24 hours to retrieve the ...

  • Your Word is Your Bond: Trust and Ethics in Underground Forums

    January 7, 2019

    Although the general public thinks of underground forums as a place where scams and suspicious dealings are rampant, the opposite is usually true: the threat actors who inhabit these sites often consider their reputation a major asset. Many of the individuals and groups in underground forums go to great lengths to ensure that transactions go through ...

  • Spyware Disguises as Android Applications on Google Play

    January 3, 2019

    Trend Micro discovered a spyware (detected as ANDROIDOS_MOBSTSPY) which disguised itself as legitimate Android applications to gather information from users. The applications were available for download on Google Play in 2018, with some recorded to have already been downloaded over 100,000 times by users from all over the world. One of the applications we initially investigated ...

  • A Dozen Flaws in Popular Mac Clean-Up Software Allow Local Root Access

    January 3, 2019

    A passel of privilege-escalation vulnerabilities in MacPaw’s CleanMyMac X software would allow a local attacker to gain root access to an Apple machine in various ways. CleanMyMac X is a cleanup application for MacOS that optimizes the drives and frees up space by scanning for unused, redundant or unnecessary files and deleting them. No fewer than ...