Threat actors are coming for your AI assets to operationalize their use of AI

Both state-affiliated cyberespionage group and cybercrime gangs are targeting AI-related documents, configuration files, and proprietary models during intrusions. In addition, the number and scope of distillation attacks, where the knowledge, logic, and reasoning capabilities of LLMs is being extracted with targeted prompts, is increasing.

“GTIG observed adversaries with wide-ranging motivations target proprietary AI models and source code, exfiltrate application programming interface (API) credentials, and co-opt victim cloud environments to sustain unauthorized AI workloads,” the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), said in their latest quarterly AI Threat Tracker report released last week.

“This shift underscores that enterprise AI assets — from model weights to cloud compute quotas — are high-value targets for espionage, extortion, and resource theft.”