Threat actors use agentic AI to scan GitHub for exposed secrets
Original title: Threat actors use agentic AI tooling to find and abuse exposed secrets
Microsoft observed AI agents scanning repositories and abusing leaked credentials on Azure and Entra ID.
Microsoft Threat Intelligence documented threat actors leveraging an agentic AI framework named ARTEX to search public GitHub repos for secrets and application credentials. The actors then abused them for cloud discovery, data exfiltration, and Azure AI services abuse. Attack chain advanced in minutes using compromised Entra ID service principals.
Unconfirmed: Exact number of compromised tenants
- Agentic tooling: ARTEX for secret scanning
- Follow-on: Entra ID sign-ins from specific IPs
- Exfiltration from Azure Key Vault and Storage
- Rotation of exposed secrets recommended
Impact: Credential abuse and cloud resource compromise
- 1.Rotate exposed credentials
- 2.Scan code repositories for secrets
- 3.Enable GitHub secret scanning
Indicators of compromise
auto-extracted · verify before use · export allAll| Type | Indicator | Context |
|---|---|---|
| ipv4 | 157.22.126.128 | parately, Microsoft observed reconnaissance operations from 157.22.126[.]128 targeting AI workloads deployed by victims on Azure AI se |
| ipv4 | 199.19.77.18 | pal and non-interactive sign-in logs for 199.19.77[.]84 and 199.19.77[.]18 including failed attempts. Sign-in errors AADSTS7000215 ( |
| ipv4 | 199.19.77.84 | g successful service principal sign-ins from the IP address 199.19.77[.]84 involving multiple application IDs across some impacted c |
| ipv4 | 65.87.223.26 | with this campaign. We identified malicious operations from 65.87.223[.]26, including indications of vulnerability exploitation by e |
From the original article
12 min read at microsoft.com
Microsoft Threat Intelligence has observed threat actors using the agentic offensive security framework ARTEX to search GitHub for OAuth application secrets, which can be used to compromise the associated OAuth application and perform authenticated actions in the application’s tenant.
By Microsoft Threat Intelligence and Microsoft Security Research · microsoft.com
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