AI attacks steal ₹300cr from India's small NBFCs
What's the story
India's non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) have suffered an estimated loss of ₹300 crore due to a spate of recent cyberattacks, as per a report by the Economic Times. The attacks, which primarily targeted smaller NBFCs, have led to nearly 150 complaints or first information reports (FIRs) being filed. The sudden surge in such incidents has raised alarm and prompted cybersecurity agencies to work round the clock to tackle the situation.
Attack details
Attackers exploiting weak cybersecurity infrastructure
The recent cyberattacks have exploited the frailties of the weaker cybersecurity infrastructure at these NBFCs, especially those with a turnover of about ₹1,000 crore or below.
In one case, an NBFC in Delhi lost ₹7.5 crore in an attack and another ₹7.25 crore a few days later.
Cybersecurity agencies have been advising these companies to upgrade their infrastructure as soon as possible to prevent further attacks.
Perpetrators identified
Chinese hacking platform responsible for some attacks
Cybersecurity agencies have identified Chinese hacking platform CyberStrike as the culprit in some of the completed investigations.
Experts believe a combination of two Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) toolkits, Artex and CyberStrike, with other open-source models such as DeepSeek, Alibaba's Qwen, Moonshot's Kimi, and Zhipu's GLM have been attacking financial systems in India and around the world.
Attack impact
CERT-In warns of increased risks from AI tools
India's nodal cybersecurity agency CERT-In has warned that these AI tools have reduced the time from break-in to damage from days to hours.
Organizations that did not fully patch weaknesses were attacked again within days, at a greater scale.
CERT-In has advised organizations to alert their red teams to prioritize any alerts on ARTEX and CyberStrike, given their potential for targeted lures and technical exploitation at scale.