In the shadowy corners of the internet, a new era of cybercrime is unfolding. For the price of a monthly Netflix subscription—around $30—criminals can now rent sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) tools to launch devastating attacks. No longer confined to elite hackers with deep technical expertise, cybercrime has been democratized. Weaponized large language models (LLMs), deepfake generators, and automated phishing kits are available as off-the-shelf services on platforms like Telegram and the dark web. This shift marks what experts call the "fifth wave" of cybercrime, where AI becomes the backbone of illicit operations, enabling amateurs to execute professional-grade scams.
The mechanics of this rental economy are straightforward yet insidious. Cybercriminals don't need to build their own AI systems, which require significant resources and know-how. Instead, they subscribe to "jailbreak-as-a-service" providers that bypass safeguards on commercial LLMs like ChatGPT or Google Gemini. These services use advanced prompt engineering and fine-tuning to unlock restricted capabilities, allowing users to generate malicious code, craft convincing phishing emails, or even simulate human negotiations in ransomware demands. Group-IB, a cybersecurity firm, reports that several vendors offer these tools with over 1,000 active users, turning experimental tech into reliable infrastructure.
One prominent example is the use of AI in ransomware attacks. Canada's federal cybersecurity center warns that threat actors are leveraging AI to identify vulnerabilities, develop malware, and create deepfake media to coerce victims. AI automates the process, scanning networks for weak points and generating polymorphic malware that evades detection by constantly mutating its code. This lowers the barrier for entry: a novice criminal can rent an AI-powered toolkit to encrypt a company's data and demand cryptocurrency ransoms, all without writing a single line of code. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security highlights how AI-dependent "Crime as a Service" (CaaS) models allow even low-skilled actors to rent hacking tools, filling gaps in language or programming skills.
