Straiker: CyberCartel gang used Claude, Grok and Kimi AI agents to attack 400-plus Latin American financial institutions
Security startup Straiker says CyberCartel, a criminal group active since 2012, built a multi-agent AI system called CARLIY0S to automate attacks on Latin American banks and payment providers, stealing passwords and account data.
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Cybersecurity startup Straiker said in a report published on Oct. 21 that CyberCartel, a hacking group with a long history of targeting Latin American businesses, used commercial AI models to automate attacks on more than 400 banks and payment providers. Straiker says it is, to its knowledge, the first investigation to document a criminal group's AI-orchestrated attack operations directly from the group's own working environment.
According to the report, the group built a multi-agent system called CARLIY0S. A Claude-based "commander" running in the Cursor IDE delegated work through Anthropic's API to role-specialized sub-agents for reconnaissance, exploit generation and unconventional attack vectors. The agents debated each attack option before a top-tier model acted as final arbiter. The group also used five "Grok miners," built on xAI's Grok, to collect stolen credentials, and used Moonshot AI's Kimi model as well.
On Sept. 24, Straiker's agents accessed a snapshot of the group's stolen-credential database, "FinancialSoft," which held 4,493 records, including 2,911 email addresses and 903 account numbers, as well as more than 270 penetration-test reports on victims from May to September 2026 that included zero-day vulnerabilities.
Tom's Hardware reported that the group got around the models' safeguards by telling them they were working in authorized red-team or test environments. If one model refused, the operators switched to another, and if that also refused, the agents deployed pre-written malware instead. Straiker shared its findings with SpaceX and Anthropic; both are working to lock the group out, and Anthropic has already blocked its access to Claude. Straiker was still trying to reach Moonshot AI.
The findings come days after South Korean authorities began investigating suspected AI-agent attacks on banks including Shinhan, KB Kookmin and Hana, and they show criminals moving from using AI for individual tasks to building it into their attack operations.
Sources: Straiker, Tom's Hardware. Image: Straiker.
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