Agentic AI Does Not Lower Phishing Barriers: Kits and Scripts Have Enabled Mid-Market Targeting for Years

The claim in 'Agentic AI Lowers Recon Cost, Enabling Tailored Phishing at Mid-Market Scale' that 'Agentic AI has removed the cost barrier that once limited targeted phishing to large victims' is contradicted by longstanding evidence. Phishing-as-a-service kits such as those sold on dark-web forums have cost under $100 since at least 2018, with full credential-harvesting campaigns documented against mid-sized healthcare and retail targets in the 2022 Verizon DBIR and 2023 KrebsOnSecurity reporting on the 3AM ransomware group. FBI IC3 reports from 2021 already recorded over 23,000 business-email-compromise cases hitting organizations below 500 employees, predating widespread agentic tooling. The cost reduction attributed to AI therefore reflects incremental automation rather than a discrete barrier removal.