Chinese Hacker Leveraged AI Agents to Breach Over 100 Company Websites
Security researchers have uncovered a campaign in which a Chinese-speaking hacker deployed AI agents to systematically probe and breach websites at scale. The attacker targeted over 100 company websites, including those of Deere — the maker of John Deere agricultural equipment — and SharkNinja, a consumer appliance brand.
The method reportedly leveraged an open-source AI-powered problem-solving platform, allowing the threat actor to automate vulnerability discovery and exploitation across a large number of targets. Rather than manually searching for weaknesses in each site, the attacker delegated scanning and intrusion tasks to AI agents, significantly increasing the speed and scope of the operation.
Researchers note that this incident highlights a growing trend of malicious actors integrating AI tools — particularly open-source and freely available ones — into their workflows. By automating reconnaissance and attack execution, threat actors can scale operations beyond what traditional manual hacking methods would allow.
The full technical details of the campaign, including the specific vulnerabilities exploited and the extent of data accessed, remain under investigation.