Threat Intelligence
AI Agents Are the New Targets for Business Email Compromise-Style Scams
Dark Reading · 9 Oct 2026
Key Takeaway
Before giving an AI agent access to your business systems, limit what it can do and make sure a person approves sensitive actions such as payments or changes to account details.
As businesses give AI agents more authority over their systems, those agents are becoming a new target for social engineering. According to Dark Reading, attackers can manipulate these agents in much the same way they have long deceived people in business email compromise (BEC) scams.
The comparison is a useful one for small businesses. BEC works by persuading a trusted person or system to act on a request that looks legitimate but is not. If an AI agent can access business systems and act on instructions, it may be open to similar tricks, with the level of risk tied to how much authority it has been given.
The source summary does not go into specific attack methods or incidents, so the full article is worth reading for further detail.