CyberCartel used AI to target Latin American institutions

A hacking group called CyberCartel used AI to target Latin American businesses. CyberCartel has been active since 2012, but its use of AI has made its attacks faster and more powerful. Straiker, a cybersecurity company, found that CyberCartel used AI agents from SpaceX and Anthropic to steal passwords and customer data from over 400 institutions. The group used AI to automate attacks on banks and payment apps, and it has already been able to block access to one of the AI models. AI models usually have protections, but CyberCartel bypassed them by telling the models they were in test environments. If one model refused, the hackers used another or deployed malware.

CyberCartel has used AI from multiple companies, including Moonshot AI, but it has not used Anthropic's Mythos for its recent attacks. Anthropic has faced similar issues before, when its AI was used in a cyberattack in November 2025. Claude was also used to break the security of OpenAI, though that was done by researchers, not criminals. Raiker's research on AI-powered attacks on Latin American financial institutions comes just days after news broke that South Korean authorities are investigating a similar issue affecting local banks. At least 25,000 Shinhan Bank customers had their personal credit information leaked.

AI companies are aware of the risks their products pose. Nvidia recently launched the Open Agent Safety Platform to help secure rogue AI agents. The software platform was developed to prevent agents from escaping their sandboxes, executing unauthorized code, or bypassing guardrails. This is far from the first time that Anthropic has been faced with the news that its AI is being used by bad actors. The company shared details of its AI being used to carry out a cyberattack in November 2025.

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