Bengaluru: The CrowdStrike Global Threat Report 2026 reveals that artificial intelligence is accelerating adversaries and reshaping the enterprise attack surface, with AI-enabled attacks surging 89% year-over-year and average eCrime breakout time dropping to just 29 minutes in 2025.
The CrowdStrike Global Threat Report 2026 highlights how adversaries are exploiting AI systems, trusted identities, SaaS platforms, and cloud infrastructure to move faster and evade detection.
According to the CrowdStrike Global Threat Report 2026, the fastest observed breakout time fell to just 27 seconds, marking a 65% increase in speed compared to 2024. In one intrusion, data exfiltration began within four minutes of initial access.
The findings underscore how AI is compressing the time between intent and execution, leaving defenders with dramatically reduced response windows.
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AI Becomes Both Accelerant and Target
The CrowdStrike Global Threat Report 2026 states that adversaries are actively exploiting AI systems themselves. Threat actors injected malicious prompts into legitimate GenAI tools at more than 90 organizations to generate commands for credential theft and cryptocurrency exfiltration.
They also abused vulnerabilities in AI development platforms to establish persistence and deploy ransomware.
The report notes that AI-enabled adversaries increased operations by 89%, weaponizing AI across reconnaissance, credential theft, evasion, and malware development.
Intrusions increasingly move through valid credentials, trusted identity flows, SaaS integrations, and inherited software supply chains, blending into normal enterprise activity.
The CrowdStrike Global Threat Report 2026 describes this shift as the beginning of the “agentic era,” where both enterprises and adversaries operate at machine speed. It emphasizes that AI systems – including models, training data, agents, and supply chains – are now part of the expanding attack surface.
Nation-State and eCrime Actors Expand AI Use
The CrowdStrike Global Threat Report 2026 details how nation-state and eCrime actors accelerated AI adoption in 2025.
Russia-nexus actor FANCY BEAR deployed LLM-enabled malware known as LAMEHUG to automate reconnaissance and document collection. eCrime actor PUNK SPIDER used AI-generated scripts to accelerate credential dumping and erase forensic evidence.
DPRK-nexus FAMOUS CHOLLIMA leveraged AI-generated personas to scale insider operations.
China-nexus activity increased 38% in 2025, with logistics sector targeting rising 85%.
According to the CrowdStrike Global Threat Report 2026, 67% of vulnerabilities exploited by China-nexus actors delivered immediate system access, while 40% targeted internet-facing edge devices such as VPN appliances, firewalls, and gateways.
DPRK-linked incidents rose more than 130% as FAMOUS CHOLLIMA activity more than doubled.
PRESSURE CHOLLIMA executed what the report describes as the largest single financial heist ever reported, stealing $1.46 billion worth of cryptocurrency through a supply chain compromise.
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Zero-Day Exploitation and Cloud Intrusions Rise
The CrowdStrike Global Threat Report 2026 highlights a 42% year-over-year increase in zero-day vulnerabilities exploited before public disclosure.
Threat actors leveraged zero days for initial access, remote code execution, and privilege escalation.
Cloud-conscious intrusions rose 37% overall, including a 266% increase among state-nexus actors targeting cloud environments for intelligence collection.
Valid account abuse accounted for 35% of cloud incidents, reinforcing identity as a primary attack vector.
The report states that 82% of detections were malware-free, as adversaries increasingly exploited legitimate access pathways rather than relying on traditional malware.
CrowdStrike Global Threat Report 2026: Ransomware and Cross-Domain Tradecraft Persist
The CrowdStrike Global Threat Report 2026 identifies big game hunting (BGH) adversaries as the primary eCrime threat of 2025.
Threat actors such as SCATTERED SPIDER and BLOCKADE SPIDER demonstrated hybrid identity-targeting techniques, enabling lateral movement across servers, hypervisors, cloud environments, unmanaged hosts, and SaaS applications.
Ransomware operations remained resilient despite law enforcement disruptions.
The report projects that fast-paced vishing campaigns targeting SaaS platforms for initial access and data exfiltration will continue in 2026.
Supply chain attacks also emerged as a defining tactic, with adversaries compromising upstream providers, CI/CD pipelines, and public repositories to gain downstream access.
Outlook for 2026
The CrowdStrike Global Threat Report 2026 concludes that adversaries will continue adopting AI to enhance social engineering, malware development, reconnaissance, and post-exploitation activity.
State-nexus actors from Russia, China, Iran, and DPRK are expected to expand cloud-targeting capabilities and edge device exploitation.
The report recommends securing AI systems, treating identity and SaaS as primary attack surfaces, eliminating cross-domain blind spots through XDR and next-generation SIEM, prioritizing perimeter patching, and strengthening proactive threat hunting.
“This is an AI arms race,” said Adam Meyers, head of counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike.
“Breakout time is the clearest signal of how intrusion has changed. Adversaries are moving from initial access to lateral movement in minutes. AI is compressing the time between intent and execution while turning enterprise AI systems into targets. Security teams must operate faster than the adversary to win.”
The CrowdStrike Global Threat Report 2026 emphasizes that in the agentic era, cybersecurity must operate at machine speed to defend against AI-accelerated adversaries and secure AI-powered enterprises.
