AIPolicyTracker
Menu

AI incident ·

Alleged State-Sponsored Hackers Escalate Purported Phishing Attacks Using Artificial Intelligence

6 news reports Snapshot 7 Sep 2026

In brief

An AI system built by Russian Government, Government Of North Korea and 2 others and deployed by Russian Hackers, North Korean Hackers and 2 others allegedly harmed Individual Professionals On Linkedin, Global Defense Companies and 3 others.

Risk domain
Malicious Actors & Misuse Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
Occurred
Coverage
6 reportsFeb 2024

What happened

State-sponsored hackers from North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China are reportedly leveraging artificial intelligence to conduct sophisticated phishing and social engineering attacks. They target global defense, cybersecurity, and cryptocurrency sectors, aiming to steal sensitive information and, in the case of North Korea, cryptocurrencies to help fund its illicit nuclear program.

Laws that address this harm

Policy angle: Classified under Malicious Actors & Misuse (Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation) in the MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy; 5 recorded instruments address this use case.

Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).

News reports (6)

Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.

  1. North Korea and Iran using AI for hacking, Microsoft says
    theguardian.com · Guardian staff and agencies
  2. North Korean hackers take phishing efforts to next level with AI tools: Report
    nknews.org · Shreyas Reddy
  3. North Korean hackers use AI for more sophisticated scams
    ft.com · Christian Davies
  4. ChatGPT Used by North Korean Hackers to Scam LinkedIn Users
    tech.co · Isobel O'Sullivan
  5. North Korean hackers use ChatGPT to scam Linkedin users
    readwrite.com · Suswati Basu
  6. ''Attacks Are Getting Sophisticated': How North Korean Hackers Are Using ChatGPT For LinkedIn Scams
    ndtv.com · Ritu Singh

Who was involved

Alleged harmed party
Individual Professionals On Linkedin, Global Defense Companies, Cybersecurity Firms, Cryptocurrency Exchanges, Targets Of Fraudulent Professional Opportunities

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

Causal entity
Human
Intent
Intentional
Timing
Post-deployment
Harm level
—
Sectors
—
Countries
—

Risk entries describing this failure mode

Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 4.3.

  • Cheating/plagiarism

    "Cheating/plagiarism - Use of another person’s or group’s words or ideas without consent and/or acknowledgement."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • IP/copyright loss

    "IP/copyright loss - Misuse or abuse of an individual or organisation’s intellectual property, including copyright, trademarks, and patents."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Financial and business

    "Financial and Business - Use or misuse of a technology system in a manner that damages the financial interests of an individual or group, or which causes strategic, operational, legal or financial harm to a business or...

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Impersonation/identity theft

    "Impersonation/identity theft - Theft of an individual, group or organisation’s identity by a third-party in order to defraud, mock or otherwise harm them."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Dehumanisation/objectification

    "Dehumanisation/objectification - Use or misuse of a technology system to depict and/or treat people as not human, less than human, or as objects."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Defamation/libel/slander

    "Defamation/libel/slander - Use of a technology system to create, facilitate or amplify false perception(s) about an individual, group, or organisation."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Misinformation and Manipulation

    "Recent studies have demonstrated that LLMs can be exploited to craft deceptive narratives with levels of persuasiveness similar to human-generated content (Pan et al., 2023b; Spitale et al., 2023), to fabri- cate fake n...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

  • Cybersecurity

    "LLMs may exacerbate cybersecurity risks in various ways (Newman, 2024). Firstly, LLMs may significantly amplify the effectiveness of deceptive operations aimed at tricking people into disclosing sensitive information or...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

All incidents in this subdomain

Source record: incident #644 on the AI Incident Database · all 6 reports