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:

  • Impostor uses AI to impersonate Rubio and contact foreign and US officials

    July 8, 2025

    The State Department is warning U.S. diplomats of attempts to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio and possibly other officials using technology driven by artificial intelligence, according to two senior officials and a cable sent last week to all embassies and consulates. The warning came after the department discovered that an impostor posing as Rubio had ...

  • NFC fraud threatens Philippines digital payments security

    July 8, 2025

    As contactless payments and digital wallets grow quickly in the Philippines, cyber-criminals are now targeting the country by abusing Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies. Resecurity, a global leader in cyber threat intelligence, issued a stark warning, urging Philippine regulators and financial institutions to heighten their defenses amid an alarming increase in NFC-enabled fraud, particularly from ...

  • Batavia spyware steals data from Russian organizations

    July 7, 2025

    Since early March 2025, our systems have recorded an increase in detections of similar files with names like договор-2025-5.vbe, приложение.vbe, and dogovor.vbe (translation: contract, attachment) among employees at various Russian organizations. The targeted attack begins with bait emails containing malicious links, sent under the pretext of signing a contract. The campaign began in July 2024 and ...

  • BERT Ransomware Group Targets Asia and Europe on Multiple Platforms

    July 7, 2025

    In April, a new ransomware group known as BERT, has been observed targeting organizations across Asia and Europe. TrendResearch telemetry has confirmed the emergence and activity of this ransomware. This blog entry examines BERT’s tools and tactics across multiple variants. By comparing its different iterations, we unpack how the ransomware group operates, how their methods have ...

  • NordDragonScan: Quiet Data-Harvester on Windows

    July 7, 2025

    FortiGuard Labs recently uncovered an active delivery site that hosts a weaponized HTA script and silently drops the infostealer “NordDragonScan” into victims’ environments. Once installed, NordDragonScan examines the host and copies documents, harvests entire Chrome and Firefox profiles, and takes screenshots. The package is then sent over TLS to its command-and-control server, “kpuszkiev.com,” which also serves ...

  • Ingram Micro says ongoing outage caused by ransomware attack

    July 7, 2025

    Ingram Micro, a U.S. technology distributing giant and managed services provider, said on Monday a ransomware attack is the cause of an ongoing outage at the company. The hack began on Thursday, after which the company’s website and much of its network went down. Late on Saturday, the company said in a brief statement that it ...