Report: Social Engineering Remains a Central Part of AI-assisted Attacks
KnowBe4, Wednesday, July 15th, 2026
ESET's H1 2026 threat report finds attackers are bolting AI onto proven social engineering rather than inventing new techniques.
KnowBe4 summarizes ESET's Threat Report for the first half of 2026, which concludes that threat actors are adapting established social engineering methods to new platforms rather than developing genuinely novel attack techniques.
ClickFix detections grew 108% between the second half of 2025 and the first half of 2026, with attackers refining fake error messages and system prompts.
A new variant dubbed AI-fix exploits the popularity of generative AI by building fraudulent troubleshooting pages that mimic OpenAI Canvas and Microsoft Copilot.
The campaigns have expanded to macOS systems and to compromised WordPress sites that display malicious prompts to site administrators.
The report reinforces that human-focused attack vectors remain the center of gravity for cybercrime.