In the wild
Realized harm
FunkSec used AI chatbot assistance to build a Rust ransomware encryptor and claimed over 80 victims in a single month
AIR-2025-0003 AIR record · 2025-01-funksec-ai-assisted-ransomware
A real party was affected. This incident caused actual consequences, not a demonstrated capability.
From the supporting source
Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a nascent artificial intelligence (AI) assisted ransomware family called **FunkSec** that sprang forth in late 2024, and has claimed more than 85 victims to date.eweek.com
The record
Disclosed
2025-01-10
Occurred
2024-12
Vendor
multiple model providers
Product
public LLM chatbots including Miniapps
Risk domain
Agent behaviour › Unsafe actuation
Also touches
Data exfiltration channels, Uncontrolled resource consumption
System type
Generative model
Who acted
Human acted on output — the chatbot wrote the encryptor; FunkSec deployed it against 80 victims
Attack surface
Other
Autonomy level
Assistant
Initial vector
Policy violating use
Impact type
Financial loss, Data exfiltration, Service disruption
Confidence
High
Submitted by
EAI Internal
Crosswalk
- OWASP Agentic Top 10 (2026)
- ASI01 – Agent Goal Hijack
- MITRE ATLAS
- AML.T0048 – External Harms
- NIST AI RMF
- MEASURE 2.6; MANAGE 1.3
- EU AI Act
- Annex III §1(c)
- ISO/IEC
- TR 24028; 24029-1; 23894
- AIUC-1
- C. Safety
- Scope
- agent misuse
- Mitigation
- Require confirmation for destructive actions; Implement dry-run modes; Use layered safety controls.
- Taxonomy
- Enkrypt AI agent risk taxonomy · Black-Box Red Teaming of Agentic AI: A Taxonomy-Driven Framework for Automated Risk Discovery
Blast radius
more than 80 claimed victims in December 2024, more than any other ransomware actor that month
Capability abused
Defense & remediation
Recorded defense
provider safety training
Guardrail kinds
Abuse detection
Guardrail outcome
Silent
Fix shipped
none; actor used consumer chatbot front-ends
Taxonomy & references
Curator notes
Disclosed by Check Point Research. The significant claim is capability uplift, not novelty: analysts assessed the operators as inexperienced, and AI assistance is what let them ship a custom Rust encryptor and out-post every established group for a month. Check Point also noted many leaked datasets were recycled from older hacktivism campaigns, so victim counts are inflated — impact_realized stays true on the confirmed encryption and extortion activity. AI Incident Database incident 897.
Supporting sources
Cite as
Enkrypt AI. "FunkSec used AI chatbot assistance to build a Rust ransomware encryptor and claimed over 80 victims in a single month". AIR, AIR-2025-0003. https://agentincident.vercel.app/i/AIR-2025-0003/ (accessed 2026-10-19).