Blockchain-assisted cyberattacks surge fivefold, driven by Iranian and North Korean state actors, Russia-linked groups — open-weight LLMs are linked to an increase in attacks | Tom's Hardware

The technology news site Tom's Hardware has published a report stating that blockchain-assisted cyberattacks have surged fivefold, driven by Iranian and North Korean state actors alongside Russia-linked groups. The article, headlined "Blockchain-assisted cyberattacks surge fivefold, driven by Iranian and North Korean state actors, Russia-linked groups," also states that open-weight large language models are linked to an increase in attacks. The report it draws on says the widespread availability of Chinese open-source AI tools has significantly lowered the technical barrier to entry for cybercrime.

Specific figures in the report include a 440% rise in blockchain dead drop attacks. Daily malicious blockchain writes increased from 2.06 to 11.1, an increase that Chainalysis attributes to AI. The report describes these as blockchain dead drop attacks, a term the article uses alongside "blockchain-assisted cyberattacks." Iranian and North Korean state actors and Russia-linked groups are identified as involved. The article presents the fivefold surge and the 440% figure as measures of the same growth, and ties the trend to the availability of open-weight models.

According to the report, the effect of these tools is that less-experienced attackers can now launch complex cyberattacks, because the technical barrier to entry has fallen. The excerpt does not identify the report by name beyond the attribution of the blockchain-write figures to Chainalysis, nor does it specify the period over which the 2.06-to-11.1 daily write comparison was measured.