CERT-In Flags AI-Driven Cyberattacks On Indian BFSI

India's cybersecurity agency, CERT-In, has issued a critical warning to banks, non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), and fintech companies regarding an increasing wave of AI-driven cyberattacks targeting payment and disbursement APIs. The threat actor behind these attacks has been identified as 'CRAFTY FALCON', an AI-assisted financial security threat actor that leverages machine intelligence to pinpoint targets, execute attacks rapidly, and exploit victims' own payment systems to initiate unauthorized fund transfers.

CERT-In has urged all BFSI entities to consider the campaign an immediate and ongoing threat. Despite previous security measures, some organizations have been targeted again, with attacks coinciding with holidays, weekends, and other times of reduced monitoring. CERT-In's analysis revealed the use of multiple AI-driven offensive security tools, such as the ARTEX family of large language model-based tools, PentAGI, the Cairn attack search engine, and the CyberStrikeAI framework.

These tools can autonomously execute attack chains, generate custom scripts rapidly, and adapt payloads based on targeted systems' responses. The agency has shared infrastructure fingerprints and detection rules with affected entities. In addition, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) has warned financial institutions about the growing use of AI agents to commit financial fraud by exploiting compromised systems.