A Russian-speaking cybercrime group has leveraged off-the-shelf generative artificial intelligence tools to infiltrate and compromise over 600 FortiGate firewalls across 55 countries. The scope of the attack was disclosed in a recent incident report published by Amazon Web Services (AWS), raising serious concerns about the growing intersection of commodity AI tools and organized cybercrime.
FortiGate Firewall Breaches Are Hitting Organizations Worldwide
The scale and speed of the campaign highlight how generative AI tools, when combined with traditional attack methodologies, can dramatically expand the reach and efficiency of cybercriminal operations. FortiGate firewalls are widely deployed across enterprise and government network environments, making them a high-value target for threat actors seeking broad access with minimal effort.
Attackers Zeroed in on Specific Firewall Weaknesses
The cybercriminal group concentrated efforts on FortiGate devices, which form a critical part of network security infrastructure for organizations operating at scale. Despite Fortinet’s ongoing patch release cadence, the rapid deployment of AI-assisted reconnaissance tools allowed the attackers to identify and exploit weaknesses before many organizations had the opportunity to apply available mitigations. The AWS report noted that the campaign moved at an unusual pace, covering a wide geographic range in a short window of time.
Generative AI Tools Gave Attackers a Significant Edge
Off-the-shelf generative AI tools, typically marketed for legitimate productivity and development use cases, were repurposed to automate significant portions of the attack chain. These tools accelerated tasks such as target identification, vulnerability scanning, and potentially payload generation, replacing labor-intensive manual processes with fast, scalable automation. The result was a campaign that moved faster and covered more ground than traditional cybercriminal operations typically allow.
This shift signals a broader trend in the threat landscape. Organized groups no longer need deep technical expertise to conduct complex, multi-country intrusion campaigns when commercially available AI tools can handle much of the heavy lifting.
The Attack Exposes Gaps in Global Network Security Defenses
The FortiGate campaign reinforces the reality that network security devices are not passive infrastructure — they are active targets. Organizations that rely on perimeter security hardware without layered defenses, timely patching, and continuous monitoring are leaving themselves exposed to exactly this type of automated, wide-ranging attack.
Security teams are urged to audit FortiGate deployments for any signs of unauthorized access, apply all available firmware updates, and review access logs for anomalous activity. Broader defensive strategies should include regular vulnerability assessments, network segmentation, and threat intelligence sharing across sectors and borders.
The use of off-the-shelf AI tools in this campaign reflects a rapidly shifting threat environment where the barrier to launching sophisticated, large-scale attacks continues to drop. International coordination between governments, private sector organizations, and security vendors will be essential to staying ahead of threat actors who are increasingly leveraging the same tools built for legitimate innovation.
