AI cyber attack threatens global financial crisis, warns International Monetary Fund

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that artificial intelligence (AI)-powered cyber attacks could create a worldwide financial crisis. “AI-driven cyber risks could destabilise the financial system if not managed carefully,” the IMF warned, as AI cyber attacks risk disrupting payments, causing solvencies and straining liquidity. Financial systems’ dependence on shared cloud services made the threat of successful cyber attacks all the more worrying, senior IMF officials said in a blog post , and a single vulnerability could ripple out across many institutions. The warning follows Anthropic’s introduction of AI model Mythos, which sparked global concerns because of its potential to identify software vulnerabilities at scale. It’s not just the financial sector at risk. Financial services share “digital foundations” with energy, telecommunications and public sectors, all of which are threatened by the model’s rapidly evolving capacities. Using the same infrastructure means vulner