Here's a scam that didn't exist in this form two years ago: an employee searches for a popular AI tool, clicks the first result that looks like the real landing page, installs it, and hands an attacker a foothold on a company laptop. Kaspersky's latest threat research found more than 33,300 of these attacks against small and mid-sized businesses in the first four months of this year alone — almost five times the rate from the year before. The tools being impersonated include some of the most recognizable names in AI right now.
We're not sharing this to scare anyone off adopting AI — we help businesses adopt it, deliberately, every week. We're sharing it because the fastest-growing category of small business cyberattack right now is specifically riding on the same enthusiasm that makes AI adoption a good idea in the first place. Attackers aren't targeting the tools. They're targeting the rush to try them.
The malware researchers found behind these fake installs isn't subtle once it's in: password and browser-session stealers, remote-access trojans that hand an attacker live control of the machine, and ransomware droppers that sit quietly until triggered. For a business with five employees and no dedicated IT security staff, any one of those is a very bad week.
The fix isn't complicated, which is the point. Before anyone on your team installs an AI tool — or any software — go to the vendor's actual domain directly rather than the first search result. If you're standardizing tools across a team, pick a short approved list and make that the default instead of leaving discovery to whoever's search results look most convincing that day. It's a five-minute habit that closes most of this door.
Sources:
- [Threat landscape for SMBs in 2026: fake AI tools, phishing and more](https://securelist.com/smb-threat-report-2026/120357/) — Securelist (Kaspersky)
- [Fake AI Tools Just Drove 33,300 Attacks On Small Businesses](https://oandosystems.com/blog/fake-ai-tools-33300-small-business-attacks/) — O&O Systems
- [2026 SMB Threat Report: Fake AI Tools Drive Attacks](https://www.technadu.com/kaspersky-2026-smb-threat-report-fake-ai-tools-used-in-33000-attacks/629918/) — TechNadu
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