It’s three a.m., do you know what your AI agent is doing? Unit 42 has responded to a growing number of AI token jacking cases resulting in staggering financial losses. The financial loss comes from criminals gaining access to API keys used by legitimate developers for access to popular AI platforms. These keys are known as tokens, and their theft is called token hijacking, or token jacking for short.
The unrelenting frenzy of AI adoption and soaring costs of model access are converging into an irresistible opportunity for cybercriminals. Premium pricing on scarce AI processing power means stolen access via tokens can generate a quick and easy profit for attackers. Complex, patchwork billing management and limitless scaling by default can lead to massive financial losses in short periods.
Read more…
Source: Palo Alto Unit 42
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- How legitimate cloud platforms enable phishers to bypass MFA
August 4, 2026
Threat actors are increasingly exploiting legitimate cloud services to evade detection and streamline the deployment of their scam infrastructure. Cloud hosting services and decentralized networks have become primary platforms for hosting phishing pages and sites. Throughout 2025 and 2026, Kaspersky researchers have observed phishing operators steadily migrate toward platforms like Cloudflare Workers, Vercel, Netlify, GitHub ...
- CVE-2026-18577: N-able N-central Authentication Bypass Exploited in the Wild
August 4, 2026
On August 2, 2026, N-able published a security advisory for CVE-2026-18577, an authentication bypass vulnerability affecting N-central that was discovered being exploited in-the-wild after an incomplete fix for an earlier authentication bypass issue, CVE-2026-18556 was disclosed. CVE-2026-18577 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to bypass authentication and obtain administrative control of vulnerable N-central servers in affected deployments. N-able N-central is a widely deployed Remote ...
- Over 100,000 UK Police and staff have personal data leaked in attack on national database
August 4, 2026
The UK’s Police National Legal Database (PNLD) suffered a cyberattack recently, in which it allegedly lost sensitive data on more than 100,000 criminal justice professionals. In a short press release, PNLD confirmed the breach, saying it happened over a weekend. The threat actors, which were not named in the announcement, were said to have taken names, organizations, and ...
- Hackers steal over $130M by exploiting bug in offline hardware wallets
August 4, 2026
Hackers are in the midst of a massive theft of cryptocurrency from supposedly secure offline hardware wallets, according to blockchain security firms monitoring the heists. At least a dozen different hackers are said to be targeting Bitcoin owners who use the hardware crypto wallet Coldcard, made by Coinkite. At this point, it’s unclear who is behind ...
- Feds get 3 days to patch N-able God mode flaw under active exploit
August 4, 2026
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added an exploited N-able vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, giving federal agencies three days to patch a flaw that could let attackers reach managed service provider (MSP) customers. Attackers exploiting the flaw can gain “full administrative access to an N-central console,” Tracked as CVE-2026-18577 (8.2 ...
- Pass the Passkey: A Novel Attack Surface in Passwordless Authentication
August 3, 2026
This article analyzes new attack classes against passwordless authentication, focusing on Google’s synced passkey ecosystem and the Cloud Authenticator used by desktop clients. The attacks demonstrate how malware on a compromised endpoint can misuse onboarding, recovery and device trust workflows to take over passkey-protected accounts. Palo Alto Unit 42 shows how an attacker can authenticate ...