The $600 price tag haunts the narrative: 521 kernel driver vulnerabilities discovered by AI agent swarms for roughly $3 per target, with 100+ genuine local privilege escalations. Vendors have patched one CVE.
Real incidents justify the concern. 40% faced AI-enhanced attacks in the past year, yet nearly half discovered the breach only after data exfiltration. One campaign compromised FortiGate firewalls across 55 countries; another extracted 2,500 records after mapping 21 government systems and compromising 85 accounts.
These tools are still in prototype stage. Yet they’ve already scaled faster than defenders can respond.
Sources: 100+ Kernel Bugs in 30 Days • Is Your AI Security Strategy Falling Short? Inside the 2026 Global Threat Landscape Report
Coverage: AI tools enable low-cost, large-scale cyberattacks
Related on this blog: [AUTO] AI Agent Finds OTP Bypass, With Guardrails • [AUTO] AI-Orchestrated Campaign Compromised 395 Organizations • [AUTO] Workflow Identity Hijacking: The Authorization Gap