Hong Kong recorded 4,404 cybersecurity incidents in Q3 2026

HKCERT said AI is amplifying established techniques

HKCERT said AI is accelerating and amplifying established techniques, including phishing, impersonation, reconnaissance and social engineering.

It also said high-risk prompts doubled from 2% to 4% during the last year, while organisations used an average of 10 AI applications each month, many without official approval.

Other research describes phishing and fraud across channels

SOCRadar said banking, finance and cryptocurrency-related targets account for a large share of phishing campaigns in the Asia-Pacific region. It also said 61.5% of phishing pages use HTTPS, making malicious sites appear more legitimate.

Bitdefender said scams now move across the web, SMS, social media, messaging applications, email and voice calls, often as coordinated campaigns. It found that 5.16% of analyzed SMS traffic was associated with risky campaigns.

Bitdefender also classified more than 23 million of nearly 150 million analyzed incoming calls as unwanted in 2025.

HKCERT advised users to check URL spelling, domain names and certificate details rather than rely solely on HTTPS or a padlock icon. It also advised organisations to classify data before deciding what may be entered into AI tools.

Check Point Research said AI activity in attacks is also changing. In its report, it said, “AI has crossed from assistant to operator. Where it once helped attackers prepare, it now runs the operation.”