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The end of perimeter defense: When your own AI tools become the threat actor


Russia's APT28 tested LLM-powered malware on Ukraine. The same tech that breaches enterprises is now selling for $250/month on the dark web.

The malware, attributed to APT28, utilizes stolen Hugging Face API tokens to query AI models, enabling real-time attacks while displaying distracting content to victims. Cato Networks’ researcher, Vitaly Simonovich, told VentureBeat in a recent interview that these aren’t isolated occurrences, and that Russia’s APT28 is using this attack tradecraft to probe Ukrainian cyber defenses. Simonovich created a fictional world where malware development is an art form, assigned the AI a character role, then gradually steered conversations toward producing functional attack code.

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