A small team of likely freelance developers in Russia used AI chatbot Claude to develop software for an autonomous swarm of first-person-view \u201ckamikaze\u201d attack drones, including terminal guidance, target selection and coordination between multiple aircraft, according to Anthropic, the company that developed Claude. In a 154-page report describing how bad actors used its Claude AI system for state-sponsored surveillance and propaganda operations, Anthropic said the drone swarm was programmed to pick its own targets and crash into them to detonate, without a human making the final call. In their programming, the freelance team repeatedly picked a location in Ukraine\u2019s Donetsk region as their target and used VPNs to circumvent Anthropic\u2019s geographic blocks. Small drones have become a \u200ccentral weapon in the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Anthropic \u200calso found that cybercriminals and state-backed hackers are increasingly using AI to orchestrate and execute large portions of cyber-attacks, including in attacks targeting officials in Ukraine. One hacking group allegedly ran phishing, hotel wifi hijacking and \u200bWhatsApp-takeover operations against targets in the Ukrainian government, military and diplomatic sectors, using AI at nearly every stage, Anthropic said. The group\u2019s tradecraft was consistent with Russia-based threat actor Midnight Blizzard, which the US government has previously linked to Russia\u2019s SVR foreign intelligence service, Reuters reported. The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The group allegedly used AI to build a system that automatically detected when its malware was flagged by security defences and rewrote the code until it evaded detection.<\/p>\n