Midnight Blizzard Used Claude Agents to Automate Malware Evasion

Anthropic said it disrupted an AI-enabled cyberespionage campaign, tracked as GTG-20006 and assessed as consistent with Russian state-linked Midnight Blizzard, that operated from December 2025 through August 2026. The operators allegedly used Claude agents to automate reconnaissance, phishing, exploitation, lateral movement, data theft, and an iterative malware-evasion loop: testing tools against security products, modifying and rebuilding detected code, then redeploying it. More than 20 government, defense, intelligence, diplomatic, think-tank, drone-industry, hospitality, and surveillance targets across Ukraine, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North Africa were reportedly targeted; theft included drone-maker mailboxes and a proprietary drone-vision SDK. Reported activity also included DNS hijacking via hotel Wi-Fi vendors and WhatsApp-account takeovers.

Anthropic said other disrupted abuse included ShinyHunters-associated credential harvesting and Android-package analysis, a SaaS supply-chain intrusion affecting more than 200 downstream organizations, suspected Chinese-linked exploit research, and politically motivated theft and doxxing. The company warned that AI API keys, session tokens, and AI-integrated services are increasingly valuable targets because stolen access can be resold, provide victim-funded compute, and obscure attacker attribution. Anthropic banned involved accounts, strengthened misuse controls, and shared relevant indicators with law enforcement and industry partners.