{"id":187981,"date":"2026-02-16T16:02:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T21:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/16\/fraudulent-ai-assistants-target-user-information\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T16:05:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T21:05:09","slug":"fraudulent-ai-assistants-target-user-information","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/16\/fraudulent-ai-assistants-target-user-information\/","title":{"rendered":"Fraudulent AI Assistants Target User Information"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fraudulent AI Assistants Target User Information<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.pymnts.com\/cybersecurity\/2026\/fraudulent-ai-assistants-target-user-information\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-02-16 16:02:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.pymnts.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. Google\u2019s Chrome web store is reportedly being plagued by a wave of malicious browser extensions.<\/p>\n

According to a report Monday (Feb. 16) by cybersecurity publication Dark Reading, these extensions claim to offer the abilities of an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant, while stealing users\u2019 personal information in secret.
\nThe report cites research from security firm LayerX, which found 30 Google Chrome extensions that are carbon copies of each other, aside from some superficial branding differences, many of which have tens of thousands of downloads each.
\nWhile these extensions purport to act as AI assistants, they are in fact there to steal email content, browser content and anything else the user willingly offers them.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhile we\u2019ve seen [similar tactics] used by malicious extensions in the past, what is new and concerning is how it\u2019s being applied,\u201d says LayerX security researcher Natalie Zargarov.\u00a0\u201cInstead of spoofing banks or email logins, attackers are now impersonating artificial intelligence interfaces and developer tools, places where users are conditioned to paste application programming interface (API) keys, tokens and sensitive data without hesitation.\u201d
\nThe research found 30 tools, with names like \u201cGemini AI Sidebar,\u201d \u201cChatGPT Translate,\u201d or more generic monikers like \u201cAI Assistant,\u201d which amassed more than 260,000 downloads.Advertisement: Scroll to Continue <\/p>\n

PYMNTS has contacted Google for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.
\nThe findings come at a time when\u2014as PYMNTS wrote last month\u2014AI is \u201cpushing intervention earlier in the attack cycle by identifying coordinated behavior and emerging risk signals before fraud scales.\u201d
\nAs covered here, companies are ramping up their use of AI to guard against suspicious activities, even as they deal with an increasing risk from shadow AI, third-party agents and apps that could subject the businesses to cyber risks.
\nResearch from PYMNTS Intelligence has found a gap between companies\u2019 belief in their defenses against AI-powered fraud and the prevalence of those fraud cases.
\nWhile nearly all companies surveyed said they were confident in their protections, nearly 59% said they were struggling with bot-driven fraud. This gap is especially pronounced in the financial services sector, where 60.6% of companies have seen bot traffic rise in the past year, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report \u201cThe Hidden Costs of \u2018Good Enough\u2019: Identity Verification in the Age of Bots and Agents.\u201d
\n\u201cMany assume their fraud controls are mature because they\u2019ve passed compliance audits or updated authentication steps,\u201d PYMNTS wrote. \u201cBut the report\u2019s findings show that fraudsters\u2019 use of artificial intelligence\u2014from deepfakes to credential stuffing\u2014is evolving faster than those defenses. What looks compliant may, in practice, be porous.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fraudulent AI Assistants Target User Information https:\/\/www.pymnts.com\/cybersecurity\/2026\/fraudulent-ai-assistants-target-user-information\/ Publish Date: 2026-02-16 16:02:00 Source Domain: www.pymnts.com Author:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":187982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.pymnts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Google-Chrome.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[26,20,24],"class_list":["post-187981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cybersecurity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187981"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187983,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187981\/revisions\/187983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}