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CrowdStrike has released its 2026 Global Threat Report, highlighting how artificial intelligence is dramatically accelerating adversary speed, expanding the attack surface, and becoming both a weapon and a target. The report, based on frontline intelligence from tracking over 280 named adversaries, shows AI-enabled operations surging 89% year-over-year while average eCrime breakout time dropped to just 29 minutes—with the fastest recorded instance occurring in only 27 seconds.
The report underscores a clear trend: as enterprises adopt AI for innovation, adversaries follow suit—both accelerating attacks and turning AI systems themselves into high-value targets. Prompts have emerged as the new malware, with adversaries injecting malicious instructions into legitimate GenAI tools to generate credential theft commands or cryptocurrency-stealing scripts. Nation-state actors, including Russia-nexus FANCY BEAR (deploying LLM-enabled LAMEHUG malware) and DPRK-nexus FAMOUS CHOLLIMA (scaling insider operations with AI personas), demonstrate sophisticated weaponization of generative models.
eCrime actors like PUNK SPIDER used AI-generated scripts to speed credential dumping and erase forensic traces, while China-nexus groups focused heavily on internet-facing edge devices (40% of exploits) and immediate system access (67% of exploited vulnerabilities). Cloud-conscious intrusions rose sharply, reflecting adversaries’ shift toward intelligence collection from cloud infrastructure.
Adam Meyers, head of counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike said, “This is an AI arms race. Breakout time is the clearest signal of how intrusion has changed. Adversaries are moving from initial access to lateral movement in minutes. AI is compressing the time between intent and execution while turning enterprise AI systems into targets. Security teams must operate faster than the adversary to win.”
The findings emphasize the urgent need for organizations to prioritize real-time visibility, identity protection, cloud security posture, and AI-specific threat detection. As breakout times collapse and attack surfaces expand into AI platforms, defenders face unprecedented pressure to reduce dwell time and contain threats before material impact.
Additional resources include the full CrowdStrike 2026 Global Threat Report download, the Adversary Universe platform, and the Adversary Universe podcast for deeper insights.
About CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike, a global cybersecurity leader, has redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform for protecting critical areas of enterprise risk – endpoints and cloud workloads, identity and data. Powered by the CrowdStrike Security Cloud and world-class AI, the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform leverages real-time indicators of attack, threat intelligence, evolving adversary tradecraft, and enriched telemetry from across the enterprise to deliver hyper-accurate detections, automated protection and remediation, elite threat hunting, and prioritized observability of vulnerabilities.
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