Criminal AI-as-a-Service in 2026: How the Underground Market Is Operationalizing Cybercrime


The underground market for criminally oriented generative AI has moved beyond the early hype surrounding ‘malicious chatbots.’ The gradual integration of AI as a productivity layer within cybercrime operations has become the dominant story, indicating that while the potential for fully autonomous AI hacking systems is possible, attackers are not embracing them as expected. Instead, threat actors are increasingly using AI to accelerate routine, but operationally significant, tasks to scale their operations. Drafting phishing lures, profiling targets, debugging code, generating forged documents, modifying malware, translating victim communications, and processing stolen data at scale were once time-consuming activities that AI has made significantly easier. AI does not replace cybercriminals; it lowers friction, increases speed, and expands the range of actors able to perform tasks that previously required more time, skill, or external support.

Read more…
Source:  Rapid7 News


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


Related:

  • Mandatory cyber requirements after Change Healthcare attack opposed by health sector

    March 18, 2024

    The American Hospital Association has opposed mandatory cybersecurity requirements proposed for the healthcare sector following the ransomware attack against Change Healthcare, which has resulted in widespread prescription processing outages across the U.S. “Imposing fines or cutting Medicare payments would diminish hospital resources needed to combat cybercrime and would be counterproductive to our shared goal of preventing ...

  • Southeast Asia’s three-nation partnership to fight cyber threats

    March 17, 2024

    From rampant job scams to sophisticated e-commerce attacks, cyber threats in Southeast Asia are skyrocketing. Singapore reportedly had more than 46,000 cybercrime cases in 2023, including job scams and e-commerce scams, the highest since 2016. Things were almost as bad in Malaysia. Cases involving social media scams reportedly increased by 37 percent from January to November 2023 ...

  • Russia foiled 280,000 DDoS cyberattacks against remote electronic voting system

    March 17, 2024

    Speaking at a news conference in Moscow, Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission, said that the overall turnout in the presidential election as of 3:45 p.m. Moscow time (1245GMT), taking into account remote electronic voting, is 70.81%. Pamfilova also said that about 280,000 DDoS cyberattacks against remote electronic voting had been foiled, including 215,000 ...

  • UK: NHS Dumfries and Galloway hit by cyber attack with ‘significant quantity’ of data at risk

    March 15, 2024

    NHS Dumfries and Galloway has been hit by a cyber attack, with the health board saying a “significant quantity” of data has been put at risk and services could potentially be disrupted. In a statement posted to its website on Friday, the board said the attack was “focused and ongoing” and the files accessed could include ...

  • Vietnam: Over 1,800 cyber attacks detected in Q1

    March 15, 2024

    As many as 1,812 cyber attacks were detected in Vietnam so far this year, a drop of 38% compared to the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC). A newly released report by the ministry shows that the information security industry in Vietnam got an estimated revenue of 804 billion ...

  • Ransomware’s appetite for US healthcare sees known attacks double in a year

    March 15, 2024

    Following the February 21 attack on Change Healthcare, scores of people in the US have been living with the brutal, real-world effects of ransomware. Described by the American Hospital Association (AHA) President and CEO Rick Pollack as “the most significant and consequential incident of its kind against the US health care system in history,” the attack ...