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Cyber Risks · Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks

Token Jacking: Cybercriminals Could Be Stealing Your AI Resources

Summary: Unit 42 reports responding to a growing number of AI token jacking cases, in which attackers steal API keys used by legitimate developers and use or resell the access, with one case producing nearly a million dollars in charges before discovery and containment. The stolen keys feed transfer stations - gray-market proxy services, many advertised on Chinese-language marketplaces like Taobao and running on open-source platforms such as new-api or one-api - that can generate tens of millions of API calls per day, and keys are harvested through information stealers, phishing, improperly secured file shares and code repositories, and poisoned self-propagating npm packages like Shai-Hulud and Miasma.

What's compelling: Unit 42 says it has seen attackers take inadvertently exposed credentials and integrate them into a transfer station within minutes, and that organizations have very little recourse to recover funds billed for tokens they did not use - costs that can derail budgets or force smaller businesses into bankruptcy.

Read the original at Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks ↗

Topics
Detection & Response
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