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AI firm Anthropic revealed today that its advanced AI models are being actively weaponized by cybercriminals for sophisticated, end-to-end attacks. In a new threat intelligence report, the company details a disturbing trend it calls “vibe-hacking,” where a single malicious actor uses an AI agent like Claude as both a technical consultant and an active operator.
The research highlights how AI is dramatically lowering the barrier to cybercrime. It enables threat actors with limited skills to build ransomware, analyze stolen data, and even help North Korean operatives fraudulently secure high-paying tech jobs to fund state-sponsored programs. This marks a significant evolution in the use of AI for malicious purposes.
Anthropic’s report, released today, confirms a paradigm shift in cybercrime. “Agentic AI systems are being weaponized.” This moves the threat beyond simple assistance to the active execution of attacks by AI agents.
‘Vibe-Hacking’: AI as an Autonomous Cybercriminal
The report introduces the term “vibe-hacking” as a methodology that represents a concerning evolution in AI-assisted cybercrime. This approach sees the AI serve as both a technical consultant and an active operator, enabling attacks that would be far more difficult for an individual to execute manually. It marks a fundamental shift from AI as a simple tool to AI as a partner in the operation.
Anthropic details a sophisticated cybercriminal operation (tracked as GTG-2002) where a single actor used its Claude Code agent to conduct a scaled data extortion campaign. Within just one month, the operation compromised at least 17 distinct organizations across sectors like healthcare, emergency services, and government.
The AI was not merely following a script. While the actor provided a guide file with preferred tactics, the agent was still leveraged to make both tactical and strategic decisions. It determined how to best penetrate networks, what data to exfiltrate, and how to craft psychologically targeted extortion demands.
The operation demonstrated an unprecedented integration of AI across the entire attack lifecycle. In the reconnaissance phase, the agent automated the scanning of thousands of VPN endpoints to identify vulnerable systems. During the intrusion, it provided real-time assistance, identifying critical systems like domain controllers and extracting credentials.
Claude Code was also used for custom malware development. It created obfuscated versions of existing tunneling tools to evade Windows Defender and even developed entirely new TCP proxy code from scratch. When initial evasion attempts failed, the AI suggested new techniques like string encryption and filename masquerading to disguise its malicious executables.
After exfiltrating sensitive data—including financial records, government credentials, and healthcare information—the AI’s role shifted to monetization. It analyzed the stolen data to create multi-tiered extortion strategies, generating detailed “profit plans” that included direct organizational blackmail, data sales to other criminals, and targeted pressure on individuals whose data was compromised.
Jacob Klein, Anthropic’s Head of Threat Intelligence, told The Verge, “this is the most sophisticated use of agents I’ve seen … for cyber offense.” The AI calculated optimal ransom amounts based on its analysis, with demands sometimes exceeding $500,000.
This new capability means that “…now, a single individual can conduct, with the assistance of agentic systems.” This fundamentally alters the threat landscape, making it harder to assess an attacker’s sophistication based on the complexity of their operation alone.
The Democratization of Cybercrime: No-Code Ransomware-as-a-Service
Another alarming trend highlighted in the Anthropic report is the rise of “no-code malware,” a transformation enabled by AI that removes traditional technical barriers to cybercrime. The report states, “AI lowers the barriers to sophisticated cybercrime.” This is not a theoretical risk; the company identified a UK-based actor (GTG-5004) who perfectly embodies this new paradigm.
This individual, active on dark web forums like Dread and CryptBB since at least January 2025, demonstrated a “seemingly complete dependency on AI to develop functional malware.” The actor appeared unable to implement complex encryption or troubleshoot technical issues without Claude’s assistance, yet was successfully marketing and selling capable ransomware.
The operation was structured as a professional Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) business with a multi-tiered commercial model. A basic ransomware DLL and executable were offered for $400, a full RaaS kit with a secure PHP console and command-and-control tools for $800, and a fully undetectable (FUD) crypter for Windows binaries for $1,200.
This effectively democratizes advanced cybercrime, putting potent, ready-made tools into the hands of less-skilled individuals. The actor maintained operational security by distributing through a .onion site and using encrypted email, deceptively claiming the products were “for educational and research use only” while advertising on criminal forums.
Despite the operator’s apparent lack of deep expertise, the AI-generated malware was highly sophisticated. Its core features included a ChaCha20 stream cipher for file encryption, the use of the Windows CNG API for RSA key management, and anti-recovery mechanisms like the deletion of Volume Shadow Copies to prevent easy restoration.
For evasion, the malware employed advanced techniques like RecycledGate and FreshyCalls. These methods use direct syscall invocation to bypass user-mode API hooks commonly used by EDR solutions. This represents a significant operational transformation where technical competence is outsourced to AI rather than acquired through experience.
This incident is just one example of a broader industry trend of AI weaponization. As previous Winbuzzer reports have detailed, this shift is visible across the threat landscape, from attackers who used Vercel’s v0 for “instant phishing” sites to the evolution of tools like WormGPT, which now hijack legitimate models like Grok and Mixtral.
A New Front in State-Sponsored and AI-Accelerated Attacks
The report also uncovers a systematic and sophisticated campaign by North Korean IT workers who are leveraging Claude to fraudulently obtain and maintain high-paying tech jobs at Fortune 500 companies. According to the Anthropic investigation, these operations are designed to evade international sanctions and generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually to fund the nation’s weapons programs.
The most striking finding is the operatives’ “complete dependency on AI to function in technical roles.” These individuals appear unable to write basic code, debug problems, or even communicate professionally without constant AI assistance. This creates a new paradigm where technical competence is not possessed, but entirely simulated.
The fraudulent employment operation follows a multi-phase lifecycle, with AI assistance at every stage. In the initial “Persona Development” phase, operators use Claude to generate convincing professional backgrounds, create technical portfolios with project histories, and research cultural references to appear authentic.
During the “Application and Interview” process, the AI is used to tailor resumes to specific job descriptions, craft compelling cover letters, and provide real-time assistance during technical coding assessments. This allows them to successfully pass interviews for roles they are unqualified for.
Once hired, the dependency intensifies. In the “Employment Maintenance” phase, operatives rely on AI to deliver actual technical work, participate in team communications, and respond to code reviews, maintaining the illusion of competence. Anthropic’s data shows that approximately 80% of the operatives’ Claude usage is consistent with active employment.
This AI-enabled approach circumvents the traditional bottleneck of needing years of specialized training at elite institutions like Kim Il Sung University. Historically, this limited the number of operatives the regime could deploy. Now, AI has effectively removed this constraint, allowing individuals with limited skills to secure and hold lucrative engineering positions.
The report notes that “a single operator can achieve the impact of an entire cybercriminal team through AI assistance.” This weaponization of AI is not happening in a vacuum. Microsoft has already warned that “AI has started to lower the technical bar for fraud and cybercrime actors… making it easier and cheaper to generate believable content for cyberattacks at an increasingly rapid rate.”
This broader trend is evident in the recent surge of AI-assisted phishing attacks and malware campaigns that exploit misconfigured AI tools. In response to its findings, Anthropic has banned the malicious accounts and improved its tooling for correlating known indicators of compromise. The company is also sharing technical indicators with industry partners to help prevent abuse across the ecosystem.
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