Fake AI, real malware: Attackers impersonating AI brands

A year of MDR casework shows attackers repeatedly exploiting demand for AI tools

Sophos X-Ops reviewed a year of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cases tagged as ‘AI activity.’ Of the 34 cases that held up, nearly all were attackers creating fake versions of legitimate AI sites and software to infect users with malware.

Attackers are exploiting the surge in demand for AI software by faking the software itself: names users trust, like Claude, ChatGPT, and Copilot, become delivery vehicles for malware. For defenders that is good news – or at least, not all bad – because malware is a problem that existing controls are designed to address.

This analysis draws on 12 months of Sophos MDR casework, from July 2, 2025 to June 29, 2026, alongside Counter Threat Unit (CTU) intelligence and SophosLabs research.

During that period, 86 MDR cases were tagged for AI involvement. We reviewed each case individually against our AI threat taxonomy and confirmed 34 as genuine adversarial AI activity.

Additionally, we identified a further four cases through analysts’ investigations: a Cursor-assisted detection-evasion case, a SonicWall SMA ransomware intrusion, a custom Slack-controlled RAT built with an AI coding agent, and a fake Claude site delivering a previously undocumented backdoor. We included these cases in our dataset, bringing the total to 38.

Of the rest of the cases, 25 were benign AI developer tooling tripping behavioral detections, and 27 included an AI keyword only incidentally.