Hacker Used AI Agents to Breach More Than 100 Sites, Including John Deere and SharkNinja

The case adds to concerns that AI-powered tools can be used for large-scale cyberattacks with limited human involvement. Norforge researchers uncovered the attacks through exposed work on Cairn, an open-source AI platform that describes itself as a “general-purpose problem-solving engine.” With Cairn, users set a start and an end point for AI agents, which document their progress as they move through a task. Norforge said hackers can also use the tool to orchestrate cyberattacks using AI agents.

The hacker behind the more than 100 breaches was the “most active” among the exposed Cairn instances Norforge discovered, Reuters reported. The attacker targeted companies based in the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan. According to Reuters, the attacker laid out “preferred intrusion tactics” using fewer than 100 Chinese characters, and successful breaches took about 23 hours. Norforge found more than 20 exposed Cairn instances that are “likely malicious.”

In a statement to Reuters, a John Deere spokesperson said there is “no indication that sensitive information was accessed” as a result of the attack. Cummins said it is “investigating the report of a potential cyber-attack on a website operated by one of our third-party vendors.” SharkNinja said the breach affected a standalone site with product support information and that it had contained the threat. John Deere, Cummins and SharkNinja did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.

Norforge said it is working to get the malicious Cairn instances taken down. Cairn’s creator, who goes by @le1xia0, said earlier this month that the platform “was never a ‘hacking tool,’” adding that “misuse is a human decision, not a feature of the engine.”