A cybercriminal used AI agents to commit a string of attacks against more than 100 different companies — an alarming incident that shows how autonomous agents with advanced AI hacking capabilities have exponentially raised the threat that a single human hacker can pose.
As Reuters first reported, a threat researcher at the cybersecurity company NorForge discovered that a Chinese-speaking hacker had used autonomous agents to carry out the mass hacking spree, which impacted global companies including John Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins, among dozens of others.
The hacker isn’t alone. According to Snorre Fagerland, the researcher who discovered the Deere and SharkNinja hacker, the cybercriminal is one of several malicious actors who have abused an open source AI tool called Cairn to send swarms of agents on autonomous hacking sprees.
“It’s a new world now,” Fagerland, who detailed his findings in a report, told Reuters.
