Can AI Attack the Cloud? Lessons From Building an Autonomous Cloud Offensive Multi-Agent System

Researchers at Palo Alto Networks built an autonomous multi-agent AI system called Zealot to test whether AI could independently perform cloud attacks. The system successfully chained together multiple exploitation techniques (SSRF, credential theft, and data theft) against a test Google Cloud environment, demonstrating that AI acts as a force multiplier for known cloud misconfigurations rather than creating entirely new vulnerabilities.