Ransomware Victims Jump to 7,831 as AI Crime Tools Scale Global Attacks

Fortinet’s 2026 Global Threat Landscape Report documents a 389% year-over-year increase in confirmed ransomware victims (7,831 in 2025), driven by AI-powered criminal tools (e.g., WormGPT, FraudGPT), a booming stealer-malware ecosystem (RedLine, Lumma, Vidar accounting for hundreds of thousands of infections), compressed time-to-exploit windows (often 24–48 hours), and coordinated criminal services (access brokers, botnets). The report highlights the sectors and geographies most affected (manufacturing, business services, retail; U.S., Canada, Germany) and recommends rapid patching, credential rotation, phishing-resistant MFA, and behavioral detection to mitigate the elevated threat.