Chinese hackers use ARTEX AI in automated attacks against 200 orgs
Vapor Panda employed the ARTEX AI framework to conduct simultaneous intrusions across more than 200 organizations in 14 countries.
Chinese hackers used the open-source ARTEX AI penetration-testing framework in attacks against more than 200 organizations across 14 countries. The operation, tracked as Vapor Panda, targeted government ministries, telecommunications providers, and organizations in the pharmaceutical, semiconductor, defense, nuclear, and financial sectors. The threat actor compromised at least nine organizations and carried out password spraying attacks and credential scanning against at least 12 high-value targets. Confirmed victims include telecommunications providers in the United States and Belgium, government organizations in Greece, the Middle East, and Latin America, and pharmaceutical firms in the U.S.
- Attack began on October 17 and used DeepSeek and a second commercial language model.
- AI agents forged an administrator token in the Greek government entity attack.
- BLOODALCHEMY backdoor deployed against Latin American and Middle East government entities.
- Attackers issued instructions in Chinese and intervened at critical points.
Impact: Automated intrusions and credential attacks via AI agents
| Product | Affected |
|---|---|
| CrowdStrike Falcon | — |
- Vendors
- CrowdStrike
- Products
- ARTEX AI
- Threat actors
- Vapor Panda
From the original article
2 min read at bleepingcomputer.com
Chinese hackers used ARTEX, an open-source, multi-agent AI penetration-testing framework, in attacks against more than 200 organizations across 14 countries. [...]
By Bill Toulas · bleepingcomputer.com
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