Russian SVR Hackers Used Claude AI in Cyber Strikes

Hacking and cybercrime groups linked to Russian intelligence have used the Claude AI tool to intensify operations targeting Ukrainian and Western institutions, according to a report by Claude’s developer, Anthropic.

Anthropic has disrupted a series of cyberattacks over the last six months that have used Claude to carry out “multi-victim campaigns that, even just a year ago, would have required many skilled operators and specialist knowledge,” the US-based tech firm said in a report.

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One malicious actor identified in the report is Midnight Blizzard, a hacking group described by Microsoft as “a Russia-based threat actor attributed by the US and UK governments as the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation.”

“One of the [Midnight Blizzard] operators is a Russian speaker using the handle ‘JackPoterz’ whose tradecraft and targeting are consistent with Russian state-nexus espionage,” Anthropic wrote in its ‘Detecting and countering misuse of AI’ report issued on September 10.

Military and government targets

Midnight Blizzard operations targeted “government ministries, defense and intelligence bodies, embassies and diplomatic missions, think tanks, and defense-industrial companies, concentrated in Ukraine and Europe but extending to the Middle East and maritime related government agencies in Asia,” Anthropic said.

Targets included WhatsApp accounts of high-level officials, according to the report, with the most common victims being “Ukrainian government, military and diplomatic staff.”

“The actor scanned email services and remote access systems across more than two dozen Ukrainian government organizations,” the report read. “A common theme of the targeting was Ukraine and military drone technology providers and supply chains.”

The report also contained a cautionary assessment: “As models continue to evolve and improve, we assess that more actors, from lone wolves to organized entities, will continue to adopt AI frameworks to enable more sophisticated cyberattacks at greater speed and scale.”