AI-Powered Ransomware Like ‘XenWare’ Could Be the Biggest Cyber Threat to U.S. Industries

AI-enhanced ransomware is outpacing corporate defenses, and fast. Seventy-six percent of organizations admit they cannot match the speed or sophistication of these attacks, according to CrowdStrike’s 2025 State of Ransomware Survey. Adversaries now lean on artificial intelligence at every step of their operations, from custom malware generation to deepfake voice scams and fully automated attack chains.

“From malware development to social engineering, adversaries are weaponizing AI to accelerate every stage of attacks, collapsing the defender’s window of response,” said Elia Zaitsev, CTO at CrowdStrike. The volume is striking, with 5,186 ransomware attacks logged so far in 2025, a 36 percent jump from 2024.

Industrial sectors are absorbing the worst of it

The industrial world is squarely in the crosshairs. Threat intelligence firm KELA tracked 4,701 global ransomware incidents between January and September 2025, up from 3,219 during the same period in 2024. Nearly half of those attacks, 2,332, hit critical infrastructure sectors, a 34 percent surge year over year.

“Ransomware operations should be understood not solely as financially motivated attacks but also as tactical instruments, capable of disrupting victim operations while inflicting financial and reputational damage,” said Lin Levi, Threat Intelligence Team Lead at KELA.

Manufacturing is bearing the heaviest load. Attacks in that sector spiked 61 percent from the prior year. A Honeywell report also recorded a 46 percent jump in ransomware targeting industrial operators from late 2024 to the first quarter of 2025, with 2,472 potential attacks logged in Q1 2025 alone.

The United States remains the top target

The U.S. continues to take the biggest hit, absorbing roughly 1,000 attacks, or 21 percent of global ransomware activity. The financial impact is brutal. Unplanned downtime tied to ransomware costs Fortune 500 companies an estimated 1.5 trillion dollars a year, about 11 percent of revenue.

U.S. firms are enticing targets because they sit at the heart of the global economy and national security. “Industrial operations across critical sectors like energy and manufacturing must avoid unplanned downtime as much as possible, which is precisely why they are such attractive ransomware targets,” said Paul Smith, director of Honeywell Operational Technology Cybersecurity Engineering.

AI has supercharged social engineering and intrusion chains

What used to be clumsy social engineering now feels disturbingly real. Voice phishing is powered by convincing text-to-speech models that mimic people, accents, and even local dialects. These deepfake scams have raised the floor for attackers and lowered the margin for error for employees on the receiving end.

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The same technology behind malicious vishing can be explored for education and creative projects. The TechBull suggests trying ElevenLabs to understand how realistic AI voices have become. Seeing it firsthand is a powerful lesson in modern phishing awareness.

Security teams are feeling that shift. Eighty-seven percent of defenders say AI makes phishing lures more convincing. Nearly half of organizations now cite automated attack chains as their top ransomware concern, and 85 percent agree traditional detection approaches are fading.

Attackers are moving to precise, high-impact playbooks

Broad, noisy campaigns are giving way to tailored intrusions that blend access phishing, rapid encryption, and data theft for double extortion. One pattern, linked to Storm-1811, uses email bombing to overwhelm defenders while attackers impersonate IT staff on Microsoft Teams to capture credentials. New RaaS outfits such as Anubis have added destructive wipers, and crews like Eldorado and Play have tuned ESXi-targeting strains to cripple VMware estates that many enterprises rely on.

Speed now decides who wins

AI runs these intrusions at machine speed. Many defenders worry they cannot detect or respond quickly enough. Fewer than a quarter of organizations recover within a day, and roughly a quarter suffer major disruption or data loss.

As CrowdStrike’s Elia Zaitsev puts it, time is the currency of modern cyber defense. Every second lost gives attackers more leverage and increases the odds of a business-stopping event.

Ransom payments are a trap

Paying may feel like the fastest way out, but the data is punishing. Eighty-three percent of companies that paid were attacked again, often by the same group, and 93 percent reported the theft of data anyway. Payment flags an organization as a soft target and funds the next campaign.

Leadership gaps are widening exposure

There is a growing disconnect between boards and security teams. Seventy-six percent of organizations report a gap between perceived readiness and reality on the ground. Boards are increasingly accountable under evolving disclosure rules, yet many still underinvest in the tooling and muscle memory needed to counter AI-scale threats. A strong majority, 89 percent, now say AI-powered protection is essential to close that gap.

Recent incidents show the stakes

This is not theoretical. In April 2025, Nova Scotia Power suffered a ransomware strike that disrupted operations and exposed the data of 280,000 customers. In September, an outage at Collins Aerospace tied to check-in software caused chaos across major European airports. A single attack on Sweden’s Miljödata impacted more than 200 municipalities and roughly a million people. Groups like Qilin were particularly active, and along with Clop, Akira, Play, and SafePay accounted for nearly a quarter of incidents in 2025.

What companies should prioritize now

With 89 percent of organizations agreeing that AI-powered protection is essential, the path forward is getting clearer. The most durable programs focus on prevention, early detection, and fast recovery.

• Adopt continuous real-time monitoring and threat intel to catch lateral movement early. KELA’s guidance emphasizes pre-ransom behaviors that are visible if you are watching continuously.
• Harden identity and access. Enforce phishing-resistant multifactor authentication, privileged access management, and strict session controls.
• Educate staff on verification. Train employees to validate contact methods before granting IT access and to spot voice deepfakes and fake Teams messages.
• Close known holes. Patch widely exploited vulnerabilities such as CVE-2024-21762 that multiple ransomware groups target.
• Segment networks and protect backups. Maintain offline or immutable backups and test restore times to minutes, not days.
• Practice incident response. Run regular tabletop exercises and detection engineering sprints to trim response time.
• Align to established frameworks. Map controls to NIST CSF 2.0 and use CISA’s Stop Ransomware guidance to validate coverage.
• Reduce physical attack surface. Counter malicious USB drops and other removable media risks, which surged with 1,826 unique USB threats in Q1 2025.

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Security starts with people. The TechBull recommends all-in-one digital safety services like Aura to help employees protect personal data, devices, and credit. Strong personal security habits often blunt the social engineering paths attackers use to reach corporate systems.

AI-powered ransomware is now an operational risk to U.S. industry and critical infrastructure. The race will be decided by who wields AI better, the attackers or the defenders. As criminal groups professionalize and automate, the urgency to deploy next-generation, AI-driven defenses is no longer up for debate.