GCD AI RADAR
incidents/AIR-2026-0355

AI in the Middle Web-Based AI Services as C2 Relays

AI-enabled attack1 Research / proof of conceptAI-assisted intrusion

Researchers demonstrated an attack where malware uses unauthenticated public AI assistants as covert command-and-control relays. The technique leverages standard URL-fetch capabilities to exfiltrate data and receive attacker instructions.

Details

type
AI-enabled attack
Attackers used AI as a meaningful part of a cyberattack against someone else.
categories
  • AI-assisted intrusion
    Threat actors using AI tooling in reconnaissance, exploitation, lateral movement or operations.
owasp llm top 10
no entry for these categories
mitre atlas
no technique for these categories
Both rows are derived from the type and categories (OWASP 2025 edition, ATLAS release 2026.09), not classified per record. How
severity
1 · Research / proof of concept
Demonstrated by researchers; no known real-world exploitation.
targets
xAI, Microsoft
products
Grok, Microsoft Copilot
incident date
17 Feb 2026
first reported
30 Jun 2026
origin
MITRE ATLAS
Derived from MITRE ATLAS (Apache 2.0, © MITRE).
classifier confidence
0.95 · published at or above 0.80; see the methodology
tags
c2 · copilot · grok · ai-in-the-middle
record
created 2026-10-18 06:55Z · updated 2026-10-18 06:55Z · json

Sources · 2

  1. 2026-06-30
    AI in the Middle: Web-Based AI Services as C2 Relays
    MITRE ATLAS · atlas.mitre.org/studies/AML.CS0061
  2. 2026-06-30
    AI in the Middle: Turning Web-Based AI Services into C2 Proxies & The Future Of AI Driven Attacks
    research.checkpoint.com · research.checkpoint.com/2026/ai-in-the-middle-turning-web-based-ai-services-into

Titles and links belong to their publishers. The summary above is written by GCD AI RADAR in its own words; data is CC BY-SA 4.0.

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