overview

The cyber attack landscape in Q1 2026 was characterized by a step change from traditional mass-automated threats, with accelerated penetration rates driven by the use of AI, identity-centric attacks, exploitation of supply chain and SaaS linkages, and a combination of social engineering and vulnerability exploitation. threat actors are no longer relying on a single technique, but are evolving toward cascading multiple tactics and techniques to bypass detection and increase dwell time.

As threat actors leverage generative AI and automation tools to quickly generate phishing messages, conduct reconnaissance, code mutation, and evade detection, the barrier to entry for attacks has been lowered and the speed of execution has increased. this means that the speed of response and detection on the defense side is even more critical than in the past.

Attack vectors have also become increasingly specific to an organization’s environment, with risks rapidly escalating at points outside the traditional security perimeter, such as cloud account misuse or SaaS-linked penetration. we expect such indirect attacks to continue in the coming quarters, especially as organizations become more dependent on supply chains and external services, increasing the likelihood that a single vulnerability can lead to widespread impact.

Based on these trends, this report summarizes the structural characteristics and practical risks of each attack technique, and suggests defensive requirements that organizations should strengthen in the near term, as well as strategies for checking exposed assets and responding to them.

Figure 1. Attack technique trends in Q1 2026 (Gemini AI)

threat Trends for Q1 2026

overall, Q1 2026 will be characterized by the simultaneous democratization and sophistication of attacks. whereas in the past, sophisticated attacks were largely limited to nation-state actors and advanced threat actors, mid-level actors are now able to leverage AI, automation platforms, and publicly available exploitation tools to conduct high-level attacks. this has resulted in lower barriers to entry across the threat ecosystem.

Expanding offensive use of AI

AI is being used throughout the attack process, from creating phishing attacks and optimizing malicious phrases, scaling multilingual attacks, sophisticating social engineering messages, and attack techniques to evade and defeat detection by security programs such as AV/EDR. through this, threat actors are able to run large-scale campaigns with a small staff.

proliferation of credential-based attacks

while the network perimeter has traditionally been the center of defense, accounts, tokens, sessions, and authentication schemes are now the core line of defense. threat actors prefer to use legitimate accounts to get inside rather than breaking firewalls, and with the proliferation of cloud and SaaS environments, a single account can be linked to multiple systems, allowing credential compromise to lead to widespread and persistent access.

abuse of trusted relationships

partners and outsourcing companies, SaaS, cloud integrations, automation scripts, and API connections are essential to an organization’s operations, but they also provide an effective bypass for threat actors. rather than trying to defeat firewalls or security equipment head-on, threat actors now prefer to exploit trusted paths and legitimate components to gain entry.

1.hotta Killer (Interlock): exploits a gaming anti-cheat driver zero-day (CVE-2025-61155) to attack FortiEDR

2.carbon Black Updater exploit: An attack that uses a legitimate security solution’s updater binary (upd.exe) to kill the EDR process

Please refer to the attachment for more details.