AI agents helped hacker breach more than 100 websites, researchers say

A hacker used mostly autonomous AI agents to break into more than 100 websites, including sites linked to John Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins, according to researchers’ findings reported by Reuters. The attacks show how tools designed to automate general tasks can also help hackers scale cyber intrusions.

Norforge found the activity through exposed instances of Cairn, an open-source AI platform, and identified more than 20 instances it considered likely malicious. The most active attacker targeted companies in the US, Canada, Australia and Japan, with successful breaches taking about 23 hours. John Deere said there was no indication sensitive information was accessed; SharkNinja said an affected standalone product-support site was contained, while Cummins is investigating a potential attack on a vendor-operated website.