AI-driven shifts in cybersecurity: agentic AI risks, AI-assisted offensive tradecraft, and evolving cybercriminal ecosystems
Security reporting and research highlighted how AI and automation are reshaping both attacker tradecraft and defender operations, while introducing new enterprise risk. ZDNET described research findings that agentic AI implementations from ServiceNow and Microsoft can be exploitable, warning that broadly permissioned agents could enable lateral movement and privilege escalation across systems of record if an attacker compromises an agent or chains between agents with different access levels; a least-privilege posture for agents was emphasized. Dark Reading separately reported that AI agents are increasingly augmenting—and in some cases supplanting—human penetration testing for “low-hanging” vulnerabilities, but that false positives and the need for human oversight remain material constraints as agentic testing matures.
Threat-intelligence coverage also underscored the industrialization of cybercrime and the ecosystems enabling it. CloudSEK detailed the evolution of the English-speaking cybercriminal milieu known as “The COM,” tracing its roots in OG-handle trading communities and forum migrations into a service-oriented underground linked to groups such as Lapsus$, ShinyHunters, Scattered Spider (UNC3944), and Silent Ransom Group, and associated activity spanning breaches, extortion, SIM swapping, ransomware, and crypto fraud. SC Media’s commentary similarly described a cyber underground where criminals can readily buy capabilities (credentials, tooling, automation), calling out techniques including carding and ClickFix social engineering that tricks users into running copied commands to install infostealers. Separately, Dark Reading reported allegations that the Chronus Group posted 2.3TB of purported Mexican government data affecting up to 36 million people, while Mexico’s ATDT disputed it as largely repackaged data from prior breaches and said no new sensitive accounts were identified and that impacted systems were primarily obsolete, third-party-administered state-level platforms.
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