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:

  • 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. ...

  • Malicious meeting invite fix targets Mac users

    March 1, 2024

    Cybercriminals are targeting Mac users interested in cryptocurrency opportunities with fake calendar invites. During the attacks the criminals will send a link supposedly to add a meeting to the target’s calendar. In reality the link runs a script to install Mac malware on the target’s machine. Cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs investigated and flagged the issue. Scammers, impersonating ...

  • Hackers stole ‘sensitive’ data from Taiwan telecom giant

    March 1, 2024

    Hackers stole “sensitive information” including military and government documents from Taiwan’s largest telecom company and sold it on the dark web, the island’s ministry of national defence has said. The confirmation of the democratic island’s latest major data leak followed a report by local news channel TVBS on the hack of telecom giant Chunghwa Telecom. Read more… Source: ...