"Crooks are defrauding AI firms by signing up for new accounts in order to steal tokens used to buy computing power. The problem has become so rampant, says Collison, that token thieves now account for one in every six new customer signups."
"He added that "token pilfering" has become so widespread that it's fast becoming too expensive for AI startups to offer free trials to prospective customers. Cybercriminals targeting startups is hardly new, of course. The rise of the AI economy, however, has created a new opportunity since, unlike traditional software trials, a signup for an AI firm comes with valuable tokens for compute that can be resold."
""I think token theft is the most under-discussed topic in AI," said Emily Sands, Stripe's Head of Data and AI. "One of the things that's really scary about that is that these attackers can burn inference costs, can rack up massive usage bills that they never intend to pay, and they can do that very, very quickly because they are consuming tokens at machine speed.""
"In an interview with Fortune, Sands said token fraud often entails crooks signing up for multiple accounts at an AI company, and across multiple companies, in order to use the tokens for a purpose unrelated to what the firm is offering, or else to resell them. In every case, they disappear after burning through the tokens-a scam that Sands likened to people who "dine and dash" at restaurants."
Cybercriminals are defrauding AI firms by creating new accounts to steal tokens used to purchase computing power. Stolen tokens are resold or used for unrelated criminal activities. Token theft has become common enough that token thieves represent a significant share of new customer signups. The fraud can quickly burn inference costs and generate large usage bills that the attackers do not intend to pay. Criminals often open multiple accounts across one or many AI companies and then disappear after consuming the tokens. Agents can burn through tokens within minutes, making traditional anti-fraud investigation too slow to prevent the scam.
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