A hacker used AI agents to break into more than 100 websites
The agents mostly operated on their own, according to security firm Norforge.
World#01
100+
websites breached by AI agents
Image: The Verge
100+websites breached by AI agents
The short version
- Norforge says a hacker used AI agents that mostly operated on their own to break into more than 100 websites.
- Reuters reports that the victims included John Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins.
- The attacker targeted companies in the US, Canada, Australia and Japan, and successful breaches took about 23 hours.
- Norforge traced the attacks to exposed instances of Cairn, an open-source AI platform, and found more than 20 that are likely malicious.
Why it matters
The case shows how AI agents can carry out intrusions at scale with little human involvement. Developers building agent tools should note that a platform meant for problem-solving was used to orchestrate attacks.
“misuse is a human decision, not a feature of the engine.”