Cybercrime no longer functions as a series of isolated campaigns. Today, it operates as a system, with malicious hackers operating across an end-to-end life cycle and compressing the attack life cycle with shadow agents.
This is the headline finding from the 2026 Global Threat Landscape Report from FortiGuard Labs. Derived from Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs telemetry, it is a snapshot of the active threat landscape and trends from 2025.
Cybercrime is one of the world’s most pervasive and costly threats, and the study reveals how malicious actors are beginning to leverage agentic AI to execute more sophisticated attacks.
“As cybercriminals increasingly use AI to bolster their tactics, cyber defenders must evolve cybersecurity operations into an industrialized defense and adopt AI-enabled tools that respond at the same velocity as modern threats,” says Derek Manky, chief security strategist and global vice-president of threat intelligence at Fortinet FortiGuard Labs.
Modern cybercrime crosses borders and sectors, and even traditional definitions of crime itself. As attacks grow more sophisticated and interconnected, key findings from the report reveal:
- Velocity defines risk as time-to-exploit (TTE) shrinks: As AI accelerates reconnaissance, weaponization, and execution, fortiguard intelligence shows that TTE as 24 to 48 hours for critical outbreaks, a sharp increase from earlier reports that revealed a TTE of 4,76 days. Real-world incidents reflect how minutes can define outcomes: Active exploitation attempts were made within hours of the React2Shell vulnerability public disclosure.
- Ransomware victims skyrocket: FortiRecon adversary intelligence identified 7 831 confirmed ransomware victims globally, skyrocketing from approximately 1,600 identified victims in the Fortinet 2025 Global Threat Landscape Report. Availability of crime service kits like WormGPT, FraudGPT, and BruteForceAI contributed to this 389% increase year-over-year (YoY). The top three targeted sectors include manufacturing (1 284), business services (824), and retail (682). Geographic concentration includes the US (3 381), Canada (374), and Germany (291).
- Identity sprawl defines cloud exposure: FortiCNAPP intelligence confirms that throughout 2025, most confirmed cloud incidents originated from stolen, exposed, or misused credentials rather than from infrastructure exploitation. Sector analysis shows hospitals/physician clinics and retail establishments as the number one target. Large identity populations, federated access models, and complex cloud integrations make these prime targets for malicious hackers.
Inside the habits of modern, AI-enabled cybercriminals
As FortiGuard Labs Cyberthreat Predictions for 2026 projected, the most capable threat groups function as semi-autonomous enterprises, supported by shadow agents, access brokers, and botnet operators who provide services on demand.
Key findings from the 2026 Global Threat Landscape Report show:
- Shadow agents reduce operator skill requirements while increasing workflow speed. FortiRecon dark web signals captured AI-enabled offensive tooling advertised as services and products, including enhanced versions of WormGPT and FraudGPT, and novel services like HexStrike AI, an offensive AI tool with automated reconnaissance attack path generation; and BruteForceAI, a penetration testing tool that integrates large language models (LLMs) for intelligent form analysis and can execute sophisticated multi-threaded attacks.
- With AI, criminals work smarter, not harder. FortiGate IPS telemetry recorded a 22% decrease in brute force attempts YoY, pointing to efficiency gains: With optimized, intelligent brute force techniques, threat actors are making fewer attempts against better-selected targets, increasing success probability per credential tested. This activity translates into about 67,65-billion brute force events globally, with approximately 185 million attempts per day; 1,3-billion attempts per week; and 5,6-billion attempts per month. At the same time, intelligence revealed a 25,49% increase in global exploitation attempts YoY.
- Stolen datasets are more popular than leaked credentials. In the 2025 Global Threat Landscape Report, FortiGuard Labs observed a 500% increase in logs available from systems compromised by infostealer malware. In 2026, FortiRecon intelligence found an additional 79% increase and revealed a shift toward theft of more comprehensive data sets, enabled by agentic AI. Within dark web “database” activity, stealer logs dominated advertised and shared datasets (67,12%), exceeding combolists (16,47%) and leaked credentials (5,96%). Stealer logs reduce attacker effort by bundling identity material with contextual artifacts, including browser-resident data, enabling immediate replay and faster conversion than brute force or password spraying.
- Credential-stealer malware persists. Credential-stealer malware remains a lucrative industry and primary upstream engine for exposure generation. FortiRecon telemetry shows stealer activity dominated by RedLine: 911 968 infections (50,8%); Lumma: 499 784 (27,84%); and Vidar: 236 778 (13,19%).