12:58 PM EDT, 08/27/2025 (MT Newswires) -- Amazon ( AMZN )-backed (AMZN) Anthropic said Wednesday its artificial intelligence-powered coding assistant Claude Code was used by a cybercriminal to conduct a large-scale data extortion operation across multiple international targets.

Using Claude Code to automate reconnaissance, credential harvesting, and network penetration at scale, the hacker was able to create a systematic attack campaign that resulted in the compromise of sensitive information and direct ransom demands that sometimes exceeded $500,000, the company said in its August Threat Intelligence report.

The campaign demonstrates an evolution in AI-assisted cybercrime, where AI serves as a technical consultant and active operator, "enabling attacks that would be more difficult and time-consuming for individual actors to execute manually," according to the report.

Defense against the cyberattacks also becomes increasingly difficult as the AI-generated attacks adapt to defensive measures in real-time, the report said.

In response, Anthropic said it started improving its detection methods and banned the accounts associated with the operation. The AI company said it also shared technical indicators with "key partners" to help prevent similar cases of abuse in the future.

Price: 228.80, Change: +0.09, Percent Change: +0.04