How Cybercrime and Cyberwarfare Are Converging in Today’s Threat Landscape

Read full article from CyberArk here:  https://www.cyberark.com/resources/all-blog-posts/when-cybercrime-meets-cyberwarfare/?utm_sorce=nhimg

The divide between cybercrime and cyberwarfare is disappearing. Financially motivated groups and state-sponsored actors increasingly rely on the same tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs): exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities, abusing Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), leveraging proxies, and moving laterally within legitimate IT environments. Even organizations with no direct geopolitical relevance can become targets through supply-chain connections.

Key risks emerging from convergence:

• Supply-chain attacks: Incidents like the Salesloft–Drift OAuth compromise (2025) and the MOVEit vulnerability (2023) show how attackers exploit trusted integrations to reach hundreds or thousands of organizations at once.

• Strategic gray zone: Events such as SolarWinds (2021) and Qilin (2025) demonstrate how criminal infrastructure can intersect with state objectives, creating attacks that are both financially and geopolitically motivated.

• AI-enabled attacks: Agentic AI lowers the barrier for small actors while enabling automation of reconnaissance, exploitation, and credential theft. Defenders also benefit from AI-powered threat detection and faster containment.

Defensive priorities for organizations:

1. Focus on TTPs and capabilities – Map attack chains and mitigate each step, from initial access to exfiltration, before attribution is known.

2. Disrupt the kill chain – Automate detection, isolation, and privilege management to contain attacks quickly.

3. Use attribution for collaboration – Share intelligence through ISACs, national CERTs, and public-private partnerships to strengthen protection across sectors.

As cybercrime and cyberwarfare converge, clarity, speed, and cooperation become critical. While technical mitigation shields your organization, collaboration and information-sharing are the ultimate force multipliers.

Bottom line: In the modern threat landscape, unity is power, and TTP disruption is your first line of defense.