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:

  • Hackers are sending malicious links through Google Doc comment emails

    January 6, 2022

    Research from cybersecurity company Avanan has shown that hackers are increasingly using Google Docs’ productivity features to slip malicious content past spam filters and security tools. Avanan’s Jeremy Fuchs said that in December, the company saw cyberattackers using the comment feature in Google Docs and Google Slides to leverage attacks against Outlook users. “In this attack, hackers ...

  • 1.1M Compromised Accounts Found at 17 Major Companies

    January 5, 2022

    There have been more than 1.1 million online accounts compromised in a series of credential-stuffing attacks against 17 different companies, according to a New York State investigation. Credential-stuffing attacks, such as last year’s attack on Spotify, use automated scripts to try high volumes of usernames and password combinations against online accounts in an effort to take ...

  • A New Web Skimmer Campaign Targets Real Estate Websites Through Attacking Cloud Video Distribution Supply Chain

    January 3, 2022

    Supply chain networks are frequent targets for cybercrime, as controlling a weak link in the supply chain can grant cybercriminals access to more victims – especially when the weak link is the source of the supply chain. Recently, we found a supply chain attack leveraging a cloud video platform to distribute skimmer (aka formjacking) campaigns. ...

  • Data breach: Broward Health warns 1.3 million patients, staff of ‘medical identity theft’

    January 3, 2022

    This weekend, the Broward Health hospital system notified more than 1.3 million patients and staff members that their personal information was involved in a data breach that started on October 15. In a statement on Saturday, the Florida hospital system said that in addition to names, addresses and phone numbers, Social Security numbers, bank account information ...

  • Israel’s Jerusalem Post website hacked on Soleimani assassination anniversary

    January 3, 2022

    Israel’s Jerusalem Post newspaper said on Monday its website had been hacked, in what it said was an apparent threat to the country. Instead of displaying a main news page, the website showed an illustration that appeared to recall top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq on this ...

  • Top 10 healthcare breaches in the U.S. exposed data of 19 million

    December 31, 2021

    The healthcare sector has been the target of hundreds of cyberattacks this year. A tally of public data breach reports so far shows that tens of millions of healthcare records have been exposed to unauthorized parties. Most of the largest data breaches result from ransomware attacks and the first ten of them account for more than ...