The Era of AI-Generated Ransomware Has Arrived

[anirbandutta01]

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https://www.wired.com/story/the-era-of-ai-generated-ransomware-has-arrived/

Cybercriminals are increasingly using generative AI tools to fuel their attacks, with new research finding instances of AI being used to develop ransomware.

As cybercrime surges around the world, new research increasingly shows that ransomware is evolving as a result of widely available generative AI tools. In some cases, attackers are using AI to draft more intimidating and coercive ransom notes and conduct more effective extortion attacks. But cybercriminals’ use of generative AI is rapidly becoming more sophisticated. Researchers from the generative AI company Anthropic today revealed that attackers are leaning on generative AI more heavily—sometimes entirely—to develop actual malware and offer ransomware services to other cybercriminals.

Ransomware criminals have recently been identified using Anthropic’s large language model Claude and its coding-specific model, Claude Code, in the ransomware development process, according to the company’s newly released threat intelligence report.

Anthropic’s findings add to separate research this week from the security firm ESET that highlights an apparent proof of concept for a type of ransomware attack executed entirely by local LLMs running on a malicious server.

Taken together, the two sets of findings highlight how generative AI is pushing cybercrime forward and making it easier for attackers—even those who don’t have technical skills or ransomware experience—to execute such attacks. “Our investigation revealed not merely another ransomware variant, but a transformation enabled by artificial intelligence that removes traditional technical barriers to novel malware development,” researchers from Anthropic’s threat intelligence team wrote.