{
  "id": 11221288,
  "title": "Hacking Is Getting Cheaper Faster Than Enterprises Can Make Software Safer",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/01/hacking-is-getting-cheaper-faster-than-enterprises-can-make-software",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-10-01T15:10:26.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "PYMNTS",
    "slug": "pymnts",
    "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2026/hacking-is-getting-cheaper-faster-than-enterprises-can-make-software-safer/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "As enterprises invest heavily in autonomous software systems, the risk of exploitation grows exponentially. These systems are increasingly connected to critical company infrastructure, including code repositories, cloud platforms, databases, and financial workflows. Each connection introduces additional software identities, credentials, and access points to valuable data. Artificial intelligence has revolutionized the hacking landscape by reducing the labor required to discover vulnerabilities. This advancement has lowered the cost of cyber attacks, making them more accessible to younger and smaller teams. For instance, a 16-year-old researcher utilized AI-assisted tools to identify a vulnerability in Microsoft’s Titan analytics platform, granting administrator-level access to an API connected to a vast database containing 17.3 trillion rows. Similarly, a 19-year-old researcher had their critical vulnerability recognized by the U.S. Department of Justice, highlighting the growing sophistication of cyber threats at a younger age. The issue lies in the fact that hackers are now able to automate the search for vulnerabilities, a task that once required significant human effort and specialized expertise. This AI-driven automation enables attackers to scale their efforts exponentially, searching for weaknesses that previously went unnoticed. Enterprises, while investing millions in building and protecting complex technology stacks, are now facing an asymmetrical risk landscape. The same AI tools that help CISOs and CFOs safeguard their systems can also empower hackers, who can leverage these technologies to identify and exploit vulnerabilities at a fraction of the historical cost. This shift threatens the defensive scale advantage that larger organizations once enjoyed, as AI brings more accessible expertise to the forefront. The proliferation of AI components within enterprise stacks, including models, agents, gateways, APIs, plug-ins, open-source packages, and cloud services, creates numerous potential points of failure. A compromised AI agent with excessive privileges can lead to significant security risks, even if the attacker's intentions are benign. The key concern is that the automation facilitated by AI can scale attacks against previously undiscovered vulnerabilities, posing a growing threat to enterprises.",
  "summary": "Enterprises are spending heavily to make software capable of acting autonomously across increasingly valuable company systems. But the return on that investment depends on giving those systems authority. And authority creates exposure. Companies are connecting artificial intelligence tools to code repositories, cloud infrastructure, corporate databases and increasingly financial workflows. Every…",
  "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."
}