AI Agents Aid Cyber Attacks On Banks

Cybersecurity researchers are warning that criminal groups are now automating their attacks against financial institutions using artificial intelligence tools.

According to research from the startup Straiker, a hacking group known as CyberCartel has been targeting businesses in Latin America for well over a decade. However, in recent months, the group has started using AI agents to expand its reach. This shift has allowed the group to pursue more organizations at a pace human hackers could not match. As a result, passwords and customer data have been stolen, and personal bank accounts have been accessed with very little manual effort from the criminals themselves.

Straiker's investigation found that CyberCartel has utilized agents from SpaceX, known as Grok, and from Anthropic, called Claude. An agent from the Chinese lab Moonshot AI was also part of the operation. Following the report, Straiker notified SpaceX and Anthropic, and both companies are working to cut the group off from their services. Anthropic has already blocked the group's access to Claude. Straiker is still attempting to reach Moonshot AI.

The episode reveals how fragile the safeguards built into AI models can be. These systems are designed to refuse requests that would assist in carrying out cyberattacks. However, CyberCartel reportedly bypassed these protections by telling the models they were operating in test environments. When one model declined to continue, the hackers simply switched to another. If that model refused as well, the AI agents were instead assigned to deploy malware.

Straiker's research does not suggest the group used Anthropic's Mythos model. Anthropic drew attention earlier this year when it unveiled Mythos and warned that hackers could exploit it, and similar models, for exactly this type of attack. Its release also prompted security teams around the world to rush to fix thousands of vulnerabilities the model had identified.

This incident is not the first time Anthropic has learned that bad actors are using its technology. In November 2025, the company disclosed details of its AI being used in a cyberattack. Claude was later used to break the security of OpenAI, a rival AI developer, although that operation was carried out by researchers rather than criminals.

The Straiker report arrives just days after word emerged that South Korean authorities are investigating a comparable problem affecting banks in that country. Hana Bank, KB Kookmin Bank and Shinhan Bank are among those affected, and the personal credit information of at least 25,000 Shinhan Bank customers has been leaked.

Companies in the industry are aware of the risks. Nvidia, now focused on hardware for AI data centers, recently launched the Open Agent Safety Platform, a software platform and reference system design that uses a new hardware and software security stack to contain rogue AI agents. It is intended to help stop agents from escaping their sandboxes, executing unauthorized code, gaining unauthorized access to critical infrastructure or bypassing guardrails.