Field experiment measures how AI makes personalized phishing cheaper and more effective

An email, apparently from a colleague, with the correct name, a current project, a familiar tone and a link ... who wouldn't click? Personalized phishing has always been the most effective kind and the most expensive to produce. AI removes the cost. A research team from BIFOLD/TU Berlin, Inria and Ruhr University Bochum has now put numbers to it in the largest field study of its kind to date. The study was presented at the USENIX Security Symposium 2026 in Baltimore.