AI-augmented threat actor accesses FortiGate devices at scale | Amazon Web Services

Commercial AI services are enabling even unsophisticated threat actors to conduct cyberattacks at scale—a trend Amazon Threat Intelligence has been tracking closely. A recent investigation illustrates this shift: Amazon Threat Intelligence observed a Russian-speaking financially motivated threat actor leveraging multiple commercial generative AI services to compromise over 600 FortiGate devices across more than 55 countries from January 11 to February 18, 2026. No exploitation of FortiGate vulnerabilities was observed—instead, this campaign succeeded by exploiting exposed management ports and weak credentials with single-factor authentication, fundamental security gaps that AI helped an unsophisticated actor exploit at scale. This activity is distinguished by the threat actor’s use of multiple commercial GenAI services to implement and scale well-known attack techniques throughout every phase of their operations, despite their limited technical capabilities. AWS…