AI agents can't yet pull off fully autonomous cyberattacks - but they are already very helpful to crims

AI agents and other systems can't yet conduct cyberattacks fully on their own - but they can help criminals in many stages of the attack chain, according to the International AI Safety report.

The second annual report, chaired by the Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio and authored by more than 100 experts across 30 countries, found that over the past year, developers of AI systems have vastly improved their ability to help automate and perpetrate cyberattacks.

Perhaps the best, and scariest, evidence of that finding appeared in Anthropic's November 2025 report about Chinese cyberspies abusing its Claude Code AI tool to automate most elements of attacks directed at around 30 high-profile companies and government organizations. Those attacks succeeded in "a small number of cases."

"At least one real-world incident has involved the use of semi-autonomous cyber capabilities, with humans intervening only at critical decision points," according to the AI ...