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Raphael Satter
@raphae.li

Scoop: We looked over the shoulder of a Chinese-speaking hacker as they used AI agents to compromise more than 100 sites, including digital properties belonging to tractor maker Deere and home appliance firm SharkNinja. Almost *entirely* autonomous hacking. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

reuters.comEXCLUSIVE: How one hacker used AI agents and a few thousand dollars to break into scores of sitesOver the past couple of weeks, a cybersecurity researcher watched as a Chinese-speaking hacker broke into websites belonging to more than 100 companies, including farm equipment maker Deere , home app...
Raphael Satter
@raphae.li

These were set-it-and-forget-it intrusions. Hacker gave short, generic instructions — less than 100 Chinese characters — and AI agents did the rest, in some cases pulling off complex intrusions without any further human input.

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Raphael Satter
@raphae.li

@snoffle.bsky.social — who flagged this case to me — said he assumed that red teaming agents would need *some* supervision, if only to nudge them this way and that. Turns out, not so much. Here’s his report: norforge.com/blog/inside_...

norforge.comInside Cairn: Open Windows into massive AI-Driven Cyber Operations - NorForgeNorForge research into publicly exposed Cairn AI pentesting panels: how threat actors select targets, direct autonomous agents, exploit vulnerabilities, and expose their victims' secrets in the proces...
Raphael Satter
@raphae.li

Opsec not great on this hacker’s Cairn, though, which is how Snorre found it in the first place. I’ve left a message seeking comment by creating a dummy “project” and hoping they’ll notice. So far … they haven’t.