Safety · 2026-11-03

Hackers steal access keys to corporate AI assistants and resell them. Companies get bills for hundreds of thousands of dollars

Criminals break into corporate AI service accounts, resell access to expensive neural networks at low prices, and the owners of the hacked accounts end up paying for it.

✨ How the scheme works

Researchers at Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) and Mandiant described a new fraud they call LLMJacking. Hackers get access to AI services in two main ways. The first is by stealing special access keys. Sometimes developers accidentally leave them exposed, for example in code on GitHub. The second is by breaking into a corporate cloud account.

Then the criminals use expensive neural networks: they send thousands of requests and can even run powerful servers. The company that owns the hacked account pays for it. Often it learns about the problem only when the bill arrives.

📌 A black market for stolen access

Hackers also combine access to neural networks from different hacked accounts and sell it to buyers at prices below the official ones. Google researchers found a whole "black market" for such services.

For example, the Jet Night service promises supposedly unlimited access to advanced AI models for about $60 a month. According to researchers' estimates, this level of access would normally cost $100–250. Google suspects that Jet Night can offer such low prices precisely because of stolen keys.

🔹 How much stolen requests can cost

In one investigated case, a criminal sent over 500,000 requests to neural networks in less than eight hours. The affected company was billed almost $1 million for AI usage.

Researchers also recorded cases where hackers used other people's AI resources for over $100,000 in a single day. Earlier, dev.ua reported on a Mexican startup that received a bill for more than $82,000 in just two days because of a stolen Gemini API key.

Google believes this business may be even more attractive to cybercriminals than hidden cryptocurrency mining. Stolen access can be resold quickly, while the costs are shifted to the owners of the hacked accounts.

🔸 What companies are advised to do

To avoid paying for strangers' AI conversations, experts advise three things. First, closely monitor access keys and do not leave them exposed. Second, regularly check for unusual activity in accounts. Third, set spending limits so that a bill cannot grow to a large sum unnoticed.

Sources: 🔗 DOU/dev.ua