LUCAMEA criminal used commercially available AI services to automate extortion attacks against businesses, racking up thousands in API costs in the process. They were caught partly because they left logs and identifying information exposed in plain sight.
What this means for your business
This shows that extortion attacks are getting cheaper and easier to scale, which means smaller businesses are just as likely to be targeted as large ones. If you receive a threatening email claiming to hold sensitive data, don't pay anything before you speak to someone technical. It's also worth making sure your own systems aren't leaking information that could be used against you, things like exposed admin panels, public S3 buckets, or misconfigured cloud storage are exactly what attackers look for before they make contact.