New to the arsenal – ‘agentic cybercrime,’ where AI becomes a hacker’s strategic advisor and operational commander.

Anthropic’s August threat intelligence report sounds like a cybersecurity novel, except it’s terrifyingly not fiction. The report describes how cybercriminals used Claude AI to orchestrate and attack 17 organizations with ransom demands exceeding $500,000. This may be the most sophisticated AI-driven attack campaign to date.

But beyond the alarming headlines lies a more fundamental swing – the emergence of “agentic cybercrime,” where AI doesn’t just assist attackers, it becomes their co-pilot, strategic advisor, and operational commander all at once.

The Anthropic report highlights a cruel reality that IT leaders have long feared. The economics of cybercrime have undergone significant change. What previously required teams of specialized attackers working for weeks can now be accomplished by a single individual in a matter of hours with AI assistance.

For example, the “vibe hacking” operation is detailed in the report. One cybercriminal used Claude Code to automate reconnaissance across thousands of systems, create custom malware with anti-detection capabilities, perform real-time network penetration, and analyze stolen financial data to calculate psychologically optimized ransom amounts.

More than just following instructions, the AI made tactical decisions about which data to exfiltrate and crafted victim-specific extortion strategies that maximized psychological pressure.

One of the most unnerving revelations in Anthropic’s report involves North Korean IT workers who have infiltrated Fortune 500 companies using AI to simulate technical competence they don’t have. While these attackers are unable to write basic code or communicate professionally in English, they’re successfully maintaining full-time engineering positions at major corporations thanks to AI handling everything from technical interviews to daily work deliverables.

The report also discloses that 61 percent of the workers’ AI usage focused on frontend development, 26 percent on programming tasks, and 10 percent on interview preparation. They are essentially human proxies for AI systems, channeling hundreds of millions of dollars to North Korea’s weapons programs while their employers remain unaware.

Similarly, the report reveals how criminals with little technical skill are developing and selling sophisticated ransomware-as-a-service packages for $400 to $1,200 on dark web forums. Features that previously required years of specialized knowledge, such as ChaCha20 encryption, anti-EDR techniques, and Windows internals exploitation, are now generated on demand with the aid of AI.

Traditional cybersecurity operates on human timetables, with threat detection, analysis, and response cycles measured in hours or days. AI-powered attacks, on the other hand, operate at machine speed, with reconnaissance, exploitation, and data exfiltration occurring in minutes.

The cybercriminal highlighted in Anthropic’s report automated network scanning across thousands of endpoints, identified vulnerabilities with “high success rates,” and crossed through compromised networks faster than human defenders could respond. When initial attack vectors failed, the AI immediately generated alternative attacks, creating a dynamic adversary that adapted in real-time.

This speed delta creates an impossible situation for traditional security operations centers (SOCs). Human analysts cannot keep up with the velocity and persistence of AI-augmented attackers operating 24/7 across multiple targets simultaneously.

What makes these AI-powered attacks particularly dangerous isn’t only their speed – it’s their intelligence. The criminals highlighted in the report utilized AI to analyze stolen data and develop “profit plans” by incorporating multiple monetization strategies. Claude evaluated financial records to gauge optimal ransom amounts, analyzed organizational structures to locate key decision-makers, and crafted sector-specific threats based on regulatory vulnerabilities.

This level of strategic thinking, combined with operational execution, has created a new category of threats. These aren’t script-based armatures using predefined playbooks; they’re adaptive adversaries that learn and evolve throughout each campaign.

The current challenge is summed up as: “All of these operations were previously possible but would have required dozens of sophisticated people weeks to carry out the attack. Now all you need is to spend $1 and generate 1 million tokens.”

The asymmetry is significant. Human defenders must deal with procurement cycles, compliance requirements, and organizational approval before deploying new security technologies. Cybercriminals simply create new accounts when existing ones are blocked – a process that takes about “13 seconds.”

But this predicament also presents an opportunity. The same AI functions being weaponized can be harnessed for defenses, and in many cases defensive AI has natural advantages.

Attackers can move fast, but defenders have access to something criminals don’t – historical data, organizational context, and the ability to establish baseline behaviors across entire IT environments. AI defense systems can monitor thousands of endpoints simultaneously, correlate subtle anomalies across network traffic, and respond to threats faster than human attackers can ever hope to.

Modern AI security platforms, such as the AI SOC Agent that works like an AI SOC Analyst, have proven this principle in practice. By automating alert triage, investigation, and response processes, these systems process security events at machine speed while maintaining the context and judgment that pure automation lacks.

Defensive AI doesn’t need to be perfect; it just needs to be faster and more persistent than human attackers. When combined with human expertise for strategic oversight, this creates a formidable defensive posture for organizations.

The Anthropic report underscores how incremental improvements to traditional security tools won’t matter against AI-augmented adversaries. Organizations need AI-native security operations that match the scale, speed, and intelligence of modern AI attacks.

This means leveraging AI agents that autonomously investigate suspicious activities, correlate threat intelligence across multiple sources, and respond to attacks faster than humans can. It requires SOCs that use AI for real-time threat hunting, automated incident response, and continuous vulnerability assessment.

This new approach demands a shift from reactive to predictive security postures. AI defense systems must anticipate attack vectors, identify potential compromises before they fully manifest, and adapt defensive strategies based on emerging threat patterns.

The Anthropic report clearly highlights that attackers don’t wait for a perfect tool. They train themselves on existing capabilities and can cause damage every day, even if the AI revolution were to stop. Organizations cannot afford to be more cautious than their adversaries.

The AI cybersecurity arms race is already here. The question isn’t whether organizations will face AI-augmented attacks, but if they’ll be prepared when those attacks happen.

Success demands embracing AI as a core component of security operations, not an experimental add-on. It means leveraging AI agents that operate autonomously while maintaining human oversight for strategic decisions. Most importantly, it requires matching the speed of adoption that attackers have already achieved.

The cybercriminals highlighted in the Anthropic report represent the new threat landscape. Their success demonstrates the magnitude of the challenge and the urgency of the needed response. In this new reality, the organizations that survive and thrive will be those that adopt AI-native security operations with the same speed and determination that their adversaries have already demonstrated.