As the potential risks of artificial intelligence grow, ransomware attacks are becoming increasingly common. Now, a new study shows the two are intersecting in a dangerous way, and experts say when these technologies come together, anyone can become a cybercriminal.
A new report from the cybersecurity firm Semperis shows AI is “weaponized” in 84% of ransomware attacks. For the 2026 Ransomware Risk Report, Semperis surveyed 1,200 IT and security professionals across nine countries and eight industry sectors. The company found that AI is influencing how ransomware attacks its victims.
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Ransomware works in a relatively predictable way: it exploits an organization’s vulnerabilities and gets into its corporate networks, then encrypts data — effectively stealing it — and demands a ransom payment in exchange for the data’s return or for sensitive information to be withheld.
Now, AI is used to streamline that process in a vast majority of attacks, Semperis found. The report says AI enables attackers to identify weaknesses in a company’s network more quickly and better use social engineering to tailor strategies to specific employees. It can also automate security breaches and change the ransomware program’s tactics as defenders try to react, Chris Inglis, who served as the White House National Cyber Director under President Joe Biden, told CBS News .
“AI actually increases the capacity, scope, scale of attackers in understanding what perhaps might be the weaknesses in your system or perhaps increase the sophistication of their approach to you if they’re trying to get you to do something you shouldn’t do, that gives them an advantage, lets them in,” Inglis, who is also a Semperis board member, said.
Inglis said with the help of AI, even people who don’t have the technical expertise to break into an organization’s networks could do it. He said they could get AI to write the necessary code, giving them a way to access sensitive information without hours of hands-on learning.
He added that AI can also help experienced cybercriminals work more efficiently and at a much greater scale, according to CBS.
Semperis Associate Vice President of Security Research Tomer Bar told CBS that AI could enable ransomware developers to produce more sophisticated malicious code while significantly cutting down on development time and making it harder for authorities to track the makers.
“We’re starting to see more attacks with more rapid development, and attribution of these attacks will be more difficult for law enforcement,” Bar wrote in the report. “We’ll also be less likely to see mistakes in attack encryption algorithms because attackers can test their code with LLMs [large language models].”
The report also found that 44% of survey respondents said ransomware used their own AI agents or systems against them.
More than a third of victims surveyed by Semperis said psychological or physical threats were made against employees. Fourteen percent said that as a result of the threats, employees or family members had to change jobs, office locations or residences.
“An attacker has one goal in mind: They want to extract something from you,” Inglis said in Semperis’ report. “And the only way they’re going to do that is to make the cost of resisting their demands greater than the cost of giving in. Holding you at physical risk is the latest phenomenon because we’ve covered most of the other risks.”
Courtney Guss, Semperis’ associate vice president of crisis management, added, “People are becoming almost desensitized to their data being stolen or shared. That’s where the growth of psychological and physical threats is coming from: Other levers just aren’t as effective anymore for threat actors, so they’re adopting even more nefarious tactics.”
Semperis says 69% of surveyed ransomware victims experienced multiple successful attacks over the year and 59% paid a ransom at least once.
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