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AI-powered attack exploited PaperCut flaws to hack 395 organizations
AI-driven campaign exploited PaperCut flaws CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078, compromising 440 servers at 395 organizations in 48 countries.
GreyNoise reports a likely Russian-speaking threat actor used hundreds of AI agents combining OpenAI Codex and DeepSeek models to build, test, and refine exploits for CVE-2026-81578 and CVE-2026-82078 in PaperCut NG/MF, launching the campaign on August 31. At least 440 PaperCut instances at 395 organizations across 48 countries were compromised, with the education sector accounting for roughly half of victims and the US most targeted. Attackers harvested credentials from 280 victims, obtained OS or domain secrets from 147, and gained admin privileges at 12 organizations, using LSASS dumping, pass-the-hash, noPac, and DCSync to dump NTDS.DIT. The adversary went from empty workspace to first RCE in under four hours, and compromised at least 11 organizations within 26 seconds once the campaign launched.
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Hackers Use Hundreds of AI Agents to Exploit PaperCut Flaws and Compromise 440 Servers Worldwide
A Russian-speaking actor used hundreds of AI agents to exploit PaperCut flaws, compromising 440 servers across 395 organizations in 48 countries.
GreyNoise's Global Observation Grid observed a Russian-speaking threat actor operating from IP 45.142.193.132 deploy hundreds of autonomous AI agents, built on OpenAI's Codex harness with a DeepSeek model, to exploit PaperCut NG/MF flaws CVE-2026-81578 (authentication bypass) and CVE-2026-82078 (unsafe reflection RCE). At least 440 servers across 395 organizations in 48 countries were compromised; the US had 98 victims and educational institutions accounted for 204. The agents paired with Mimikatz, Certipy, Rubeus, and Impacket, escalated to domain admin in 12 of 440 cases, and executed DCSync to exfiltrate the full NTDS.DIT credential database.
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Agents Gone Wild: An AI-Orchestrated Global Campaign Against PaperCut NG/MF
AI-orchestrated campaign exploited PaperCut NG/MF RCE (CVE-2026-81578/82078), compromising 440+ instances at 395 organizations in 48 countries.
GreyNoise tracked a likely Russian-speaking actor using AI (OpenAI Codex harness plus a DeepSeek model) to develop, test, and deploy exploits for PaperCut NG/MF (CVE-2026-81578, CVE-2026-82078) starting 31 August 2026. The actor compromised at least 440 PaperCut instances across 395 organizations in 48 countries, achieving domain admin at 12 victims — fastest time to domain admin was five minutes and a US high school was fully compromised in seven minutes. Attack paths involved LSASS memory and registry secret harvesting, pass-the-hash to domain controllers, noPac attacks, account additions to Domain Admins, and DCSync to exfiltrate full NTDS.DIT credential dumps. Impact scope suggests access development potentially for handoff, with prior PaperCut intrusions historically leading to extortion.
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Attackers Expose Ongoing AI Tool Use Targeting Organizations in Latin America
Unit 42 documents two AI-assisted intrusion campaigns against Latin American government, utility, and financial organizations using LLM-orchestrated tooling.
Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 tracks two ongoing intrusion clusters, CL-CRI-1131 (Mexican transportation, federal ministries, municipal water utilities) and CL-CRI-1163 (Brazilian financial sector), both using living-off-the-land techniques, SOCKS5 relays, and custom RATs. The attackers appear to orchestrate operations via commercial LLMs like Claude and GPT-4.1, evidenced by iterative batch scripts and AI-generated tunneling tool naming. The Mexican campaign (also reported as Operation Escaneo by CloudSEK) exfiltrated sensitive data via dynamic-DNS infrastructure with rotated multi-SAN TLS certificates between February and June 2026. This signals broader adoption of AI-enhanced operations by diverse threat groups in the region.
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