IBM X-Force Report: AI Automates Hacks

On February 25, 2026, the annual IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index was released. The main conclusion is grim: artificial intelligence has become a massive catalyst for cyberattacks. Basic vulnerabilities are now being exploited on an industrial scale.

Attackers use LLMs to automate reconnaissance, generate polymorphic code to bypass signature-based antiviruses, and create perfect phishing emails without language errors. The time from a 0-day vulnerability publication to its mass exploitation (time-to-exploit) has shrunk to hours. Under these conditions, classic defense perimeters are dead. Corporations must urgently transition to a Zero Trust architecture and deploy counter-AI agents on the defense side (Blue Teams), otherwise, networks will be compromised automatically.

Source: IBM Newsroom