{
  "id": 10334535,
  "title": "AI Access Becomes New Commodity for Cybercriminals",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/28/ai-access-becomes-new-commodity-for-cybercriminals",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-09-28T01:16:18.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "PYMNTS",
    "slug": "pymnts",
    "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/cybersecurity/2026/ai-access-becomes-new-commodity-for-cybercriminals/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The access to artificial intelligence models has transformed into a valuable commodity for cybercriminals, as reported by the Financial Times (FT) on September 27. This emerging trend stems from hackers' desire to leverage pricey large language models (LLMs) for various malicious purposes, including extortion, warfare, and espionage. John Hultquist, chief analyst for Google Threat Intelligence Group, shared with the FT that the company has observed a significant surge in LLM-jacking this year, which involves selling stolen login credentials for public AI tools and pilfering computing resources to run models for free. Hultquist warned that the availability of low-cost AI access provides cyber attackers with a financial edge over their targets, who must defend themselves using the same AI tools. He emphasized that this trend creates an economic advantage for cybercriminals, as they can obtain these tokens at a considerably reduced rate, often selling AI access to companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google on dark web marketplaces with discounts of up to 97%. These discounts can be as high as $200 per user per month for the most advanced versions of OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude. Dark web researchers cited by the FT report that AI models are now being utilized by all threat actors, implying that AI tools will be integral to future cybersecurity measures. Hultquist cautioned that those who dismiss AI as a passing trend risk facing numerous incidents, alerts, and attacks in the near future. Recent research from PYMNTS Intelligence reveals that companies are increasingly employing AI to counter cybercriminals, even as the criminals leverage the same technology. A survey of 42% of companies showed that they utilize three or more AI defense tools, while 50% pointed to AI-generated vendor impersonation emails as their primary threat. Approximately 90% of finance leaders consider verifying vendors a moderate to major burden, highlighting the challenges in detecting and preventing these fraud attempts.",
  "summary": "Illegal access to artificial intelligence models has reportedly become a key commodity for cybercriminals. That’s according to a report Sunday (Sept. 27) by the Financial Times (FT), which said this trend is happening as hackers look to employ expensive large language models (LLMs) for extortion, warfare and espionage. John Hultquist, chief analyst for Google Threat […] The post AI Access Becomes…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}