The modern bank heist is already under way


The image of the bank robber is hopelessly outdated. Today’s heist does not begin with a getaway car outside a branch. It begins quietly, with an adversary establishing persistence inside a financial institution’s network and studying how the organisation responds, says Tom Kellermann, VP of AI Security and Threat Research at Trend AI.

The objective is no longer simply to steal money. Attackers want access to the financial system itself: payment infrastructure, confidential market intelligence, investment strategies, customer identities and the mechanisms used to defend them. TrendAI’s Modern Bank Heists in 2026 research, based on a survey of 48 financial-sector CISOs, reveals the scale of this shift. Eighty-nine per cent reported an increase in AI-enabled attacks, while 55 per cent had experienced a rise in attacks against APIs. Almost half, 46pc, had encountered attempts to steal non-public market information or investment strategies.

Read more…
Source:  Trend Micro News


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


Related:

  • Approaching cyclone: Vortex Werewolf attacks Russia

    February 6, 2026

    In December 2025 and January 2026, BI.ZONE Threat Intelligence detected malicious activity by a new cluster Vortex Werewolf (SkyCloak). The attacks targeted Russian government and defense organizations. BI.ZONE researchers findings indicate that the adversary used phishing emails to deliver malware to the target systems. Victims received messages containing a download link disguised as a Telegram file‑sharing ...

  • China’s Salt Typhoon hackers broke into Norwegian companies

    February 6, 2026

    The Norwegian government has accused the Chinese-backed hacking group known as Salt Typhoon of breaking into several organizations in the country. In a report published on Friday, the Norwegian Police Security Service said the hacking group, believed to be working for the Chinese government, targeted vulnerable network devices to conduct espionage. Norway is the latest country ...

  • Novel Technique to Detect Cloud Threat Actor Operations

    February 6, 2026

    Cloud-based alerting systems often struggle to distinguish between normal cloud activity and targeted malicious operations by known threat actors. The difficulty doesn’t lie in an inability to identify complex alerting operations across thousands of cloud resources or in a failure to follow identity resources, the problem lies in the accurate detection of known persistent threat actor ...

  • Photo-Sharing Platform Flickr Issues Data Breach Warning

    February 6, 2026

    It’s not been the greatest start to February as far as data breaches are concerned. Substack has confirmed it has been hacked, and now Flickr has issued a warning to users concerning a data breach vulnerability that might have leaked their personal data. Although it’s unknown how many users may have been affected at this stage, ...

  • Dynowiper: Destructive Malware Targeting Poland’s Energy Sector

    February 6, 2026

    The coordinated destructive campaign against critical energy infrastructure occurred on December 29, 2025, during a period of severe winter weather in Poland. According to CERT Polska’s report, the campaign targeted: 30+ wind and solar farms across Poland; A major CHP plant supplying heat to nearly half a million customers; A manufacturing sector company characterized as an ...

  • Viral AI, Invisible Risks: What OpenClaw Reveals About Agentic Assistants

    February 6, 2026

    The name OpenClaw might not immediately be recognizable, partly because it has undergone several name changes, from Clawdbot to Moltbot, then finally to OpenClaw. Yet one thing is certain: This new digital assistant feels genuinely groundbreaking. It remembers past interactions, keeps data on the user’s device, and adapts to individual preferences, making it feel like a ...