Topic starter
11/11/2026 6:00 pm
TL;DR: Fraudsters using AI tools to build malicious agents and hijack legitimate ones have doubled automation-driven fraud in two months, according to Forter. Commerce controls now need to distinguish declared automation from trusted behaviour and hidden takeover activity.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Forter: “Agentic Commerce Is Here. So Are the Fraudsters Using It.”.
By the numbers:
- Over the past two months, Forter has seen automation-driven fraud increase 2x.
Key questions
Q: Why do behavioural baselines matter in agentic commerce?
A: Behavioural baselines matter because agentic commerce can involve autonomous buying, negotiation and payment actions that look ordinary in isolation but drift from an approved pattern.
Q: How can fraud teams govern anonymous agent traffic?
A: Fraud teams govern anonymous agent traffic by treating it as untrusted until it proves a declared purpose, allowed tool set and accountable owner.
Q: How do I tell malicious agents from account takeovers?
A: Malicious agents are autonomous software instances that act with harmful intent, while account takeover is unauthorised use of a legitimate human or machine account.
Practitioner guidance
- Implement runtime agent trust scoring Score each transaction on whether the live actor matches the owner’s historical behaviour, preferences, shipping patterns, and session continuity, rather than relying on a bot flag alone.
- Separate malicious automation from takeover detection Create different detection logic for fraudster-built agents and legitimate agents under hostile control, because the evidence patterns and response paths are not the same.
- Use longitudinal behavioural baselines Maintain customer baselines across orders, destinations, and timing so the programme can spot sudden drift even when the interface and platform signals look normal.
Bottom line: Automation-driven fraud is rising because AI agents can scale abuse while still resembling legitimate commerce activity.
Glossary terms: Agentic Commerce, Malicious Agent, Cross-Merchant Intelligence, Agent Takeover
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11/11/2026 6:07 pm
Agentic commerce creates a trust boundary problem, not just a bot problem. Once automation can behave like a buyer, the security question shifts from whether traffic is automated to whether the actor behind it is authorised, accountable, and behaviourally consistent. That is an identity and fraud governance issue at the same time, which means controls must evaluate mandate and continuity rather than just volume. Practitioners should treat agent trust as a first-class control domain.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the best way to verify a buyer agent at runtime?
A: The best way to verify a buyer agent at runtime is to bind the session to a known identity and continuously re-check its context. Session continuity means validating tokens, device or workload attestation, origin, transaction history and permission scope so the agent cannot be swapped mid-session by a spoofed process or stolen credential.
👉 Read our full editorial: Agentic commerce fraud rises as AI agents evade trust checks