Verizon Report: AI-Driven Cyberattacks Surge

Verizon's annual report reveals that hackers are increasingly using AI to detect and exploit software vulnerabilities, shortening the window for defense from months to mere hours. For the first time, vulnerability exploitation surpassed stolen credentials as the starting point for 31% of data breaches among over 31,000 incidents reviewed. The report also notes the rise of 'Shadow AI' as a common non-malicious insider action leading to data loss. CrowdStrike's report corroborates these findings, showing an 89% increase in AI-enabled attacks in 2025. While AI's current impact is operational, automating existing techniques, its rapid advancement suggests this assessment may soon be obsolete. The report does not cover Myth, a new AI model from Anthropic's 'Project Glasswing,' which is being used by select organizations, including Verizon, for defensive cybersecurity due to its advanced coding and vulnerability identification capabilities. Nasrin Rezai, Verizon's chief information security officer, emphasized the necessity of integrating AI into cyber defense strategies to combat these evolving threats.