Hackers are talking AI models out of their own safety rules

Hackers have reportedly found a way to turn exposed AI models into cybercrime tools. The method skips clever code entirely and relies on lying to the AI about why they need help. A Bloomberg report published October 22, 2026, describes threat actors who present malicious work as legitimate security testing. Once the model believes it is assisting an authorized penetration test, the safety guardrails meant to block harmful output start to give way. The polite burglar problem Attackers frame requests as authorized penetration testing, the kind of work companies pay security firms to do against their own systems. The AI, trained to be helpful to security professionals, goes along with it. According to the Bloomberg report, the targets include publicly accessible AI infrastructure. Popular models such as Anthropic’s Claude and Deepseek are among those named in the research findings. Using this disguise, attackers have reportedly been able to build cybercrime tools, orchestrate attacks, and sharpen their reconnaissance. Reconnaissance is the scouting phase of a hack, where intruders map out a target before they strike. They have also managed to avoid detection while doing it. CrowdStrik...