New Delhi, July 13 -- Cyber threats targeting financial institutions are rapidly shifting from traditional hacking to trust-based attacks, with cybercriminals increasingly exploiting digital identities, artificial intelligence (AI), payment systems and third-party ecosystems instead of directly targeting passwords or transactions, according to the Digital Threat Report 2025-26 released by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), the Computer Security Incident Response Team in Finance (CSIRT-Fin) and SISA.

The report said attackers are now manipulating trust across biometric onboarding, partner applications, AI-based decision-making and real-time payments, creating a new threat model for the banking, financial services and i...