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

Summary: A Chinese-speaking criminal used autonomous AI agents built on the open-source tool Cairn to attempt break-ins at more than 1,200 websites and reach sites belonging to over 100 companies, including Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins, according to Reuters. Researcher Snorre Fagerland of NorForge found the operations from about two dozen Cairn instances left exposed on the internet starting around October 2, and NorForge measured successful break-ins at a little under 23 hours on average with an overall success rate around 10%.
Key Takeaway: NorForge put the campaign's cost at roughly $5,000 in tokens, or about $50 per successful hack, and verified one claimed intrusion at a large hardware-parts vendor with a live web shell still in place. The same exposed panels also leaked hundreds of secrets, 11% of which Trufflehog confirmed were still valid, and legitimate penetration-testing firms left real client tests on unsecured instances at the same risk.

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