2026-09-27 / Signal #5
The dark web is selling stolen Claude at 97% off
“Frontier models now have a grey-market sticker price: 3 cents on the dollar, and they’ll throw in a spare login.”
The Story
Google’s threat team found dark-web marketplaces selling unauthorized access to Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI models at discounts up to 97%, plus replacement credentials when the original login gets burned. Researchers call the pattern LLM-jacking: steal the account or the cluster, resell the intelligence, use it for crime and espionage. An underground economy is forming around other people’s inference bills.
Why It Matters
AI as a stolen utility, like cable descramblers for superintelligence. Money, crime, builder economics: the real price of Claude is whatever the forum charges this week.
Evidence
Financial Times via Google Threat Intelligence Group; Techmeme
Sources
Daily scan: 2026-09-27