Chinese hacker hits over 100 company websites using AI agents Deere and SharkNinja among top brands affected in attack

Date:
Tue, 20 Oct 2026 13:05:00 +0000

Description:
It seems the goal was to establish persistence and possibly steal money down the line.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter A hacker used AI agents to target more than 1,200 websites, compromising over 100 in under a month Autonomous agents tested vulnerabilities, adapted tactics, and established access with minimal human input Researchers warn AI-powered attacks are
making large-scale website compromise faster and cheaper In less than a
month, a single Chinese hacker managed to break into more than 100 company websites, while doing almost none of the work himself. Instead, he tasked AI agents to do it for him and paid them around $5,000 in tokens for the job.

The campaign was spotted by cybersecurity researcher Snorre Fagerland from NorForge, who was looking for exposed Cairn installations when he found approximately two dozen being used for malicious purposes. These gave him first-hand insight into an active cybercriminal operation. Cairn is described as an open source, general-purpose AI problem-solving engine, designed to
help autonomous agents find solutions to complex tasks. Instead of focusing
on a single application, Cairn provides a framework that defines goals, explores different approaches, and then executes actions to try and solve the problem. According to numerous media outlets, Cairn is quite popular in the cybercriminal community (although its not malicious by design). Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here: When security becomes a problem needing solving In this case, the problem Cairn was trying to solve for the attacker was how to run code on a website without signing in. They were trying out SQL injection, file uploads, as well as unsafe handling of stored objects. The goal, according to the researcher, was to establish persistent access to shopping and payment systems which could later be used to steal money.

Fagerland said the attacker used a combination of models, likely Claude Code with a DeepSeek model, although it is very difficult to determine. The instructions themselves were very brief, generally fewer than 100 Chinese characters, and in less than a month, the agents tried to break into more
than 1,200 sites. You may like Massive Chinese hack uses AI agents to steal over 600,000 credit cards and hit hundreds of sites with malware World-first autonomous end-to-end AI attack against Taiwan tied to Chinese hackers AI agents aggressively tried to hack US and Canadian government websites

On average, the agents poke around a website for a day (23 hours), before either breaking in or moving on. With some 100 successful break-ins,
Fagerland says the hacker paid $50 for tokens on average, per breach. This, however, is an estimate and not a confirmed billing.

The analyst did not name the victims. In its report, Cybersecurity News said the victims were mainly online stores in the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan, and Reuters managed to confirm some targets by independently reviewing the hacker's Cairn activity: including Deere (farm equipment
maker), SharkNinja (home appliance company), and Cummins (engine manufacturer). It added that two smaller businesses also acknowledged being compromised but did not reply to the agencys inquiries. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get
all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting
your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Impressive technique Deere told Reuters it took
necessary remediation actions and added that there was no indication that sensitive information was accessed. SharkNinja said the breach hit a standalone site carrying product support information only, and that the
threat had been remediated. Cummins just said it was looking into reports.

So far, no one knows if the attacker managed to steal any sensitive data from his victims, and if so - how many. The researcher apparently found hundreds
of exposed secrets in the open panels and was working with Reuters to let the victims know.

Fageraland told Reuters he was impressed by some of the techniques the agents used while compromising their victims. Apparently, after hitting a dead end against one of the targets, the AI agents scanned digital records in search
of associated infrastructure. When they found a public-facing control panel, they discovered a subtle weakness in how it processed data. It took hours of trial and error before finally being able to execute a malicious command on the websites server. What to read next RubyGems say OpenAI agents responsible for undisclosed swarm attack against its infrastructure White hat hackers
just breached OpenAI using Anthropic's Claude in less than 72 hours and it
is a case study in just how fast AI is advancing OpenAI reveals more on Hugging Face AI hack incident, and it's pretty disturbing stuff AI agents organized into a swarm, considered the risks of attack, and did whatever it took to achieve its goal

"It's not straightforward to come up with solutions like that," Fagerland said. "It's not script kiddie stuff."

AI attackers are the new normal, it seems. Business owners are advised to patch public-facing applications, restrict access to admin panels, and keep
an eye on unexpected files in web directories.

Via Tom's Hardware The best antivirus for all budgets Our top picks, based
on real-world testing and comparisons

Read our full guide to the best antivirus 1. Best overall: Bitdefender Total Security 2. Best for families: Norton 360 with LifeLock 3. Best for mobile: McAfee Mobile Security Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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