A hacking group linked to the Chinese government used a Chinese AI agent to attack hundreds of companies worldwide, Microsoft said in a blog post on Oct. 21.

Microsoft said the hacking group, Storm-0940, used Artex, an open-source AI penetration testing tool developed by Chinese engineers, to automate attacks against hundreds of organisations worldwide across multiple industries.

The attacks began as early as September. Storm-0940 obtained cloud infrastructure administrator privileges at victim organisations on multiple occasions. In some cases, it took less than three hours to secure the access. Microsoft said a recently disclosed data breach at software company ConnectWise was also carried out by Storm-0940.

Microsoft stressed that "hackers are combining AI agents with existing attack methods" and that "this is exponentially increasing the scale of attacks".

The Information said the announcement showed that rapidly advancing AI agents are becoming a tool for large-scale attacks by hackers. The Information reported on Oct. 21 on another AI-automated attack case that targeted more than 400 financial institutions in Central and South America.

Security firm CrowdStrike also said in a report early this month that hackers who recently attacked South Korean financial institutions used Artex.