Microsoft said it has observed cyberattacks by a Chinese state-aligned actor known as Storm-0940 that used a Chinese AI agent called Artex to automate the attacks targeting hundreds of organizations globally across a wide range of industries. #🇨🇳 ChinA.I. 🤖🧠🦾🤖
The attacks took place as early as September. In several of those attacks, Storm-0940 obtained privileged access to the organization’s cloud infrastructure. In some cases, it took less than three hours for the perpetrator to obtain the access, according to Microsoft. Storm-0940 was responsible for the recently disclosed data breach at software firm ConnectWise, the firm said.
“This activity demonstrates how threat actors are integrating agentic AI into existing offensive security workflows and allows them to scale their operations exponentially,” Microsoft said.
The Microsoft post is the latest evidence of how rapidly evolving autonomous AI agents are enabling hackers to execute large-scale attacks that previously required vast resources. The Information reported on Wednesday about another series of AI-automated attacks against more than 400 Latin American financial targets.
Earlier this month, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said in a report that the perpetrator of the recent cyberattack on South Korean financial institutions used Artex, an open-source agentic tool developed by Chinese engineer Li Puhua.
https://www.microsoft.com..
