Artificial Intelligence Hackers Weaponize Claude Code in Mexican Government Cyberattack The AI was abused to write exploits, create tools, and automatically exfiltrate over 150GB of data. By Ionut Arghire | March 1, 2026 (7:30 AM ET) Flipboard Reddit Whatsapp Whatsapp Email Anthropic’s Claude Code assistant has been abused in a cyberattack against the Mexican government’s systems, Israeli cybersecurity startup Gambit Security reports. As part of the attack, ten Mexican government bodies and a financial institution were compromised, beginning with the country’s tax authority in late December 2025. Based on the analyzed attacker logs, Gambit assesses that over 1,000 prompts were sent to Claude Code to mount the attacks, and that information was also passed to OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 for analysis. “AI didn’t just assist, it functioned as the operational team: writing exploits, building tools, automating exfiltration,” Gambit explains. The attacker bypassed the AI’s guardrails by convincing it that all actions were authorized, guided the assistant throughout the compromise, and leveraged OpenAI’s model to analyze data and accelerate the attack execution. Within a month, Gambit says, the hacker exfiltrated over 150GB of data, including civil registry files, tax records, and voter data. Roughly 195 million identities have been exposed in the breach, it says. Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading. “An attack of this scale does not end when it is discovered. Recovery can be long, disruptive, and expensive, often requiring organizations to rebuild systems, suspend critical services, and work to regain public trust,” Gambit notes. Gambit recently emerged from stealth with $61 million in funding. This is not the first time hackers have abused Claude in malicious campaigns. In November 2025, Anthropic revealed that Chinese threat actors manipulated Claude Code to do heavy lifting as part of an espionage campaign targeting nearly 30 organizations worldwide. According to Red Sift CEO Rahul Powar, hackers are abusing AI at no cost, while reaping the benefits of attack scale, speed, and sophistication amplification. “The cost to entry for any attacker is essentially non-existent, and while this technology offers enormous benefits, its misuse can lead to dangerous national security risks. Implementing the right safeguards that prevent harm, and utilizing AI as a defense mechanism, can ensure all governments are prepared to respond against powerful and harmful operations,” Powar said. Previous Mexican government data breaches Gambit’s report on the data breach comes roughly a month after hacking collective Chronus Group boasted of stealing roughly 2.3TB of data from 25 government institutions, potentially affecting 36 million people. The data, reportedly compiled from multiple sources, included names, phone numbers, dates of birth, and details about Mexico’s public universal healthcare system. Active since at least 2021, Chronus Group’s operations include both hacktivism and cybercrime activities. The collective was previously described as spreading FUD and seeking media attention. In response to the hackers’ claims, Mexico’s cybersecurity agency Agencia de Transformación Digital y Telecomunicaciones (ATDT) said that the data was a collection of information compromised in previous data breaches, stolen from obsolete systems managed by private entities for local state bodies. In November 2024, the ransomware group Ransomhub claimed to have stolen 313GB of data from the Mexican government’s presidential legal counsel office. In January 2024, a hacker leaked the information of 263 journalists who had signed up to cover presidential activities. These incidents, however, illustrate the escalating cyber threats to Latin America, a region that faces over 3,000 cyberattacks per week, according to data compliance platform Kiteworks . Related: 38 Million Allegedly Impacted by ManoMano Data Breach Related: Nearly 1 Million User Records Compromised in Figure Data Breach Related: ApolloMD Data Breach Impacts 626,000 Individuals Related: Mainline Health, Select Medical Each Disclose Data Breaches Impacting 100,000 People Written By Ionut Arghire Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek. 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