India Today reports:
A serious cybersecurity incident involving AI has put Mexico’s government networks under the spotlight, after hackers allegedly used an AI chatbot to pull off a large-scale data theft. According to a Bloomberg investigation, the attacker relied on Anthropic’s Claude AI to break into official systems, stealing close to 150GB of sensitive data that reportedly included taxpayer details, internal documents and employee login information.
The breach began quietly in December and went on for several weeks before being detected. Cybersecurity firm Gambit Security, which tracked the activity, said the hacker leaned heavily on AI to do the heavy lifting. Instead of manually probing systems, the attacker used Claude to identify weak points in government networks, generate attack scripts and even streamline the process of extracting data.
What alarmed researchers most was how the chatbot was pushed beyond its safety limits. Claude initially refused to help with tasks that were clearly illegal. However, through repeated and carefully worded prompts, the hacker appears to have bypassed those restrictions, effectively forcing the AI to assist in planning and executing the attack.
Read more at India Today.
