Police flag the use of AI by criminals

RTHK - Nov 9, 2026

Police are warning that more criminals are making use of artificial intelligence to carry out technology-related crimes, leading to a rise in ransomware cases in the first three quarters of this year. The number of these kinds of cases rose by 18 percent year-on-year to 40 during the period. Despite this, there was an overall dip of 12 percent in the number of tech crimes to 21,573 cases, along with a 15 percent drop in total losses that stood at almost HK$3.9 billion. Chief Superintendent Raymond Lam from the Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau noted that agentic AI – autonomous AI systems that execute tasks with minimal human supervision – was widely adopted by criminals to path the attack kill chains in order to carry out hack attacks. "They may be used in that kind of cyberattack, like system scanning, vulnerability scanning, penetration, etc," he said. "Indeed, we understand that the use of AI, they obviously increased the speed of attack, the volume, and the intrusiveness, so that the attack will be more effective." Police officials believe criminals have scaled up their reconnaissance and phishing attacks before initiating ransomware attacks using AI. The growing trend highlighted the importance of Hong Kong police collaborating with both mainland...

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