“A Single Hacker Successfully Hacks 100 Companies Using AI Agents” | #hacking | #cybersecurity | #infosec | #comptia | #pentest | #hacker

▲ Hacking (The photo above is not related to the article.)

It has been revealed that a Chinese-speaking hacker has successfully hacked the websites of more than 100 companies worldwide over the past few weeks by utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) agents.
Citing a report by cybersecurity firm Norfoge, Reuters reported on the 19th local time that the victimized companies include agricultural machinery maker Deere & Company (John Deere), home appliance firm SharkNinja, and engine manufacturer Cummins.
Snorre Fagerland, a senior researcher at Norfoge, explained in the report that he discovered the hacker while scanning the web to find instances where Cairn, an open-source AI problem-solving platform favored by hackers, was accidentally exposed to the internet.
According to Fagerland, the hacker instructed the AI agents to autonomously scan and infiltrate target sites for several hours.
The instructions were given in Chinese text consisting of fewer than 100 characters.
Until last week, the AI agents attempted intrusions on more than 1,200 corporate websites, successfully breaching over 100 of them.
It took an average of 23 hours to achieve a successful intrusion.
Fagerland noted that a mix of China’s DeepSeek and Anthropic’s Claude Code appears to have been used in the hacking, estimating that a total of 5,000 dollars was spent on token costs.
This breaks down to about 50 dollars spent per successful hack.
Fagerland stated that since around the 2nd, he has discovered 24 cases of Cairn being used for malicious activities, allowing him to observe hackers deploying AI tools to launch attacks globally.
John Deere told Reuters that it has “taken the necessary measures” following the incident and that “there is no indication that sensitive information was accessed.”
SharkNinja also stated that the hacking was limited to an independent site containing only product support information, and the threat has now been blocked.
Cummins stated, “We are investigating a report regarding a potential cyberattack that occurred on a website operated by one of our third-party vendors.”
Fagerland pointed out that this discovery serves as a real-world example showing that commercial AI agents can execute complex penetration processes from start to finish without human intervention.
Reuters reported that it was unable to confirm the extent to which data was leaked due to this hacking.
The creator of Cairn emphasized in a recent post on X (formerly Twitter) that “Cairn is an innovative form of multi-agent architecture and was not designed for hacking attacks,” adding, “If it is used to carry out harmful hacking attacks, this is not my intention.”
Fagerland noted that while he previously believed AI hacking agents would require minimal human oversight, it has now become clear that technology has moved past that stage, describing the progress in this field as “astonishing.”
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.

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