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:

  • DHL named most-spoofed brand in phishing

    October 24, 2022

    DHL is the most spoofed brand when it comes to phishing emails, according to Check Point. Crooks most frequently used the brand name in their attempts to steal personal and payment information from marks between July and September 2022, with the shipping giant accounting for 22 percent of all worldwide phishing attempts intercepted by the cybersecurity ...

  • Iran’s atomic energy agency confirms hack after stolen data leaked online

    October 24, 2022

    The Iranian Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI) has confirmed that one of its subsidiaries’ email servers was hacked after the ”Black Reward’ hacking group published stolen data online. AEOI says an unauthorized party from a specific foreign country, which is not named, stole emails from the hacked server, which consisted of daily correspondence and technical memos. The agency ...

  • Exbyte: BlackByte Ransomware Attackers Deploy New Exfiltration Tool

    October 21, 2022

    Symantec’s Threat Hunter Team has discovered that at least one affiliate of the BlackByte ransomware (Ransom.Blackbyte) operation has begun using a custom data exfiltration tool during their attacks. The malware (Infostealer.Exbyte) is designed to expedite the theft of data from the victim’s network and upload it to an external server. BlackByte is a ransomware-as-a-service operation that ...

  • #StopRansomware: Daixin Team

    October 21, 2022

    This joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) is part of an ongoing #StopRansomware effort to publish advisories for network defenders that detail various ransomware variants and ransomware threat actors. These #StopRansomware advisories include recently and historically observed tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and indicators of compromise (IOCs) to help organizations protect against ransomware. Visit stopransomware.gov to see ...

  • Wholesale giant METRO hit by IT outage after cyberattack

    October 21, 2022

    International wholesale giant METRO is experiencing infrastructure outages and store payment issues following a recent cyberattack. The company’s IT team is currently investigating the incident with the help of external experts to discover the cause of this ongoing outage. IT outages have been affecting stores in Austria, Germany, and France since at least October 17, according to ...

  • From RM3 to LDR4: URSNIF Leaves Banking Fraud Behind

    October 20, 2022

    A new variant of the URSNIF malware, first observed in June 2022, marks an important milestone for the tool. Unlike previous iterations of URSNIF, this new variant, dubbed LDR4, is not a banker, but a generic backdoor (similar to the short-lived SAIGON variant), which may have been purposely built to enable operations like ransomware and ...