Hackers Use Autonomous AI Agents to Breach Company Websites, Target Over 1,200 Sites

Summary

A Chinese-speaking criminal used Cairn, an open-source AI agent tool built for authorized penetration testing, to direct autonomous agents against more than 1,200 company websites, reaching sites of over 100 companies including Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins. Security researcher Snorre Fagerland of NorForge found about two dozen exposed Cairn control panels, one cluster of which (AIA0001) linked 14 panels to more than 1,100 attack projects. Successful break-ins took just under 23 hours on average, and the agents' overall success rate was around 10%.

Topics

• AI agents

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