Verizon DBIR: AI Helped Hackers Exploit Vulnerabilities in 31% of Recent Breaches
The 19th Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) contains worrying, if not surprising, details about how hackers are coming up with unique ways to compromise corporate networks. For DBIR 2026, Verizon security experts analysed over 31,000 real-world security incidents and 22,000 confirmed breaches across 145 countries.
They found that using artificial intelligence (AI) to fast-track malicious activities has been a raging trend throughout the coverage duration of their report’s dataset, which covers incidents from October 2024 to November 2025 and some early trends from 2026.
The death of the stolen password
It is the first time in DBIR’s 19-year history that researchers found exploiting software vulnerabilities overtaking usage of stolen credentials to become the top-most preferred way hackers gain initial access to a network.
Reportedly, this specific technique caused 31% of all breaches. Previously, hackers took months to weaponise a newly discovered software bug, whereas now, through generative...
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