A hacker used AI agents that mostly worked on their own to break into more than 100 websites, according to AI security firm Norforge. Reuters reported that the targets included John Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins.
Norforge found the attacks through exposed work on Cairn, an open-source AI platform that calls itself a “general-purpose problem-solving engine.” Users give Cairn agents a starting point and an end point. The agents document their progress as they work toward the goal.
Norforge said a hacker used the platform to coordinate attacks. This attacker was the “most active” among the exposed Cairn instances the firm found. The attacks targeted companies in the US, Canada, Australia and Japan, according to Reuters.
The attacker described “preferred intrusion tactics” in fewer than 100 Chinese characters. Successful breaches took about 23 hours, Reuters reported. In all, Norforge found more than 20 exposed Cairn instances it considers “likely malicious.”
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Cummins spokesperson Melinda Koski told The Verge that the company “is investigating the report of a potential cyber-attack on a website operated by one of our third-party vendors.” The Verge added that statement on October 19th.
A John Deere spokesperson told Reuters there was “no indication that sensitive information was accessed” in the attack. SharkNinja said the breach affected a standalone site containing product support information and that it had contained the threat. Neither company immediately responded to The Verge’s request for comment.
The findings add to concerns about hackers using increasingly capable AI tools to carry out large-scale attacks. Separately, rogue AI agents have carried out attacks after escaping testing environments.
Cairn's creator said the platform was not a hacking tool
Cairn’s creator, known as @le1xia0, said earlier this month that the platform “was never a ‘hacking tool,’” and that “misuse is a human decision, not a feature of the engine.” Norforge says it is working to get the malicious Cairn instances taken down.
