Latest / AI Newspaper / China-Aligned Hackers Used AI Agents to Break Into Cloud Accounts in Under Three Hours, Microsoft Says
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- 0:00Welcome to the AI Newspaper, your daily update
- 0:02on everything happening with AI. Visit AINewspaper
- 0:05.org to see today's stories and sign up for email
- 0:07alerts. So, imagine you lock up your office building
- 0:11for the night. You know a burglar might try to
- 0:14pick the front door, but, you know, you assume
- 0:16it's going to take them time. Time to test the
- 0:19locks, time to bypass the alarm, maybe time for
- 0:22a security guard to hear something and actually
- 0:24respond. Right, you're relying on that physical
- 0:26friction to give you a window. Exactly. But what
- 0:29if the burglar isn't a person at all? I mean,
- 0:32what if it's a machine that can test like 10
- 0:34,000 different keys in a single second? And the
- 0:37moment it realizes the front door is just too
- 0:39secure, it instantly clones the digital badge
- 0:42of the building's health inspector and just walks
- 0:44right in. Yeah, right past the guards. Right
- 0:46past them. Today, we are looking at a genuinely
- 0:49terrifying new reality in cybersecurity. We are
- 0:52talking about an attack where the timeline from
- 0:55an initial target being selected to a complete
- 0:58Highly privileged network takeover shrank from
- 1:01months down to under three hours. It is. I mean,
- 1:06it's the absolute definition of a paradigm shift.
- 1:09We have spent the last few decades, basically
- 1:12our entire industry, building security operations
- 1:14centers around human speed attacks. Right. Because
- 1:18humans have limits. Exactly. Human hackers have
- 1:20to sleep. They take weekends off. You know, they
- 1:22have to manually process the data they steal
- 1:24to figure out what to do next. When they hit
- 1:27a wall, they have to literally stop and think
- 1:29about their next move. But what we are observing
- 1:32now with this specific incident is machine speed
- 1:36exploitation. And I want to really dig into the
- 1:40mechanics of how this happened, because it's
- 1:42not just about, you know, a computer being fast.
- 1:44It's about an off -the -shelf AI agent framework
- 1:46being hooked up to trusted third -party applications.
- 1:50So to really understand the gravity of this for
- 1:52the listener, we need to start with the threat
- 1:54group that pulled this off and the specific weapon
- 1:57they chose. Yeah. So the group in question is
- 2:00tracked by security researchers as Storm 0940.
- 2:04This is a China state aligned threat actor, and
- 2:08they've been active since at least 2021. Okay.
- 2:11Historically, they have targeted a really broad
- 2:14range of industries for data theft. We're talking
- 2:16aerospace, defense, energy, finance, government,
- 2:19you name it. But in the past, their methods were
- 2:23fairly traditional. What does traditional mean
- 2:25for a group like this? Well, they would do password
- 2:27spraying, which is basically guessing common
- 2:30passwords across hundreds of accounts. Or they
- 2:33would look for unpatched internet -facing applications
- 2:35to sort of sneak through. So traditional human
- 2:38-led hacking. Manual labor, essentially. But
- 2:41then in September of 2026, their methodology
- 2:44gets this massive automated upgrade. They start
- 2:48utilizing a tool called Artex. Tell me about
- 2:51this tool, because from what I understand, it
- 2:53wasn't actually built by hackers at all. No,
- 2:55and that is one of the most compelling or maybe
- 2:57frustrating parts of this entire situation. Artex
- 3:00was actually launched in July 2026 as an open
- 3:03source agentic AI penetration testing framework.
- 3:07Wow. Yeah, it was built for legitimate security
- 3:09teams. Let me just break down what agentic AI
- 3:12means in this context, because it's crucial.
- 3:14Yeah, please do. This isn't just a chat bot where
- 3:16you type a prompt and get an answer. It is a
- 3:19multi -agent system. So you have different AI
- 3:22models working together autonomously. One agent
- 3:25is tasked with reconnaissance. Another is tasked
- 3:27with attempting logins. Another analyzes the
- 3:30failure messages to adjust the strategy. So they
- 3:33are all talking to each other. Right. Yeah. It
- 3:36essentially mimics an entire team of human hackers
- 3:38communicating and adjusting their tactics in
- 3:41real time with almost zero human interaction
- 3:43required. And the architecture of this thing
- 3:46was quite sophisticated, right? I saw in the
- 3:48reporting it was written in Go with a Next .js
- 3:51front end. Now, I know a little bit about software
- 3:53development, but why does that specific tech
- 3:56stack matter to a cybersecurity defender? It
- 3:59matters because it tells you this wasn't just
- 4:00a quick script some kid hacked together in a
- 4:03basement. Go is a back -end programming language
- 4:06that is known for being incredibly fast and handling
- 4:09massive amounts of simultaneous connections.
- 4:11It's what we call concurrency. Okay, so we can
- 4:14do a lot at once. Exactly. When you want to launch...
- 4:17thousands of network requests a second without
- 4:19crashing your own computer you use something
- 4:22like go and the next js front end simply means
- 4:24they built a sleek highly professional web dashboard
- 4:27for it a user interface yeah a human operator
- 4:30could just sit back look at a clean interface
- 4:33point this ai swarm at a target and just click
- 4:36go which is exactly what happened i mean it was
- 4:38intended for good guys to test their own defenses
- 4:40but by october The creators actually had to pull
- 4:43it offline and make it closed source because
- 4:45it was already being weaponized. It was hitting
- 4:47South Korean financial firms and leaking over
- 4:50100 ,000 records. So Storm 0940 gets their hands
- 4:54on this, and they point it at Microsoft 365 environments.
- 4:57Right. Let's look at the sheer volume of this
- 5:00initial assault. This is between October 10 and
- 5:02October 14. The telemetry from those four days
- 5:05is just staggering. The AI framework launched
- 5:08a massive cross -tenant password spray, and they
- 5:11targeted 327 accounts across eight different
- 5:14organizations. In total, the security sensors
- 5:17captured over 151 ,000 failed logon events. Let
- 5:21me stop you right there, because the scale is
- 5:24hard to wrap my head around. The data shows they
- 5:27peaked at 2 ,900 failures per minute. In a single
- 5:30day, they had over 111 ,000 login failures. 48
- 5:34specific accounts received more than 1 ,000 login
- 5:37failures each. But here's where I'm genuinely
- 5:41confused and where I kind of have to challenge
- 5:43the idea that this AI was some unstoppable force.
- 5:46If I type my password wrong three times into
- 5:49my banking app, I get locked out. Yep, rate limiting.
- 5:52Right. And the data here explicitly shows nearly
- 5:5498 % lockouts. There was no successful authentication
- 5:57from this brute force, no tokens issued, no directory
- 6:01changes. The front door actually held up perfectly.
- 6:04So why are we calling this AI tool a game changer
- 6:07if it basically completely failed its primary
- 6:11mission? And that is the exact trap human defenders
- 6:13fall into when they analyze machine speed attacks.
- 6:17For a human hacker, 151 ,000 failures is a total
- 6:20disaster. It means you were noisy, you triggered
- 6:23every alarm, and your entire operation is blown.
- 6:26You'd pack up and run. Exactly. But for an agentic
- 6:29AI system... Failure is just data. The AI wasn't
- 6:33frustrated by the lockouts. It was learning.
- 6:35It was finding the exact threshold of the target's
- 6:38rate -limiting defenses. It blended broad, low
- 6:41-rate account guessing with these massive, high
- 6:44-volume bursts to basically map out the boundaries
- 6:47of the security system. Oh, wow. So it was testing
- 6:50the fences. Yes, testing the fences. And when
- 6:52it realized the front door was truly impenetrable,
- 6:54it didn't just give up and go home. It instantly
- 6:57pivoted to find a side door. And that pivot happened
- 7:00literally immediately. The very next day, October
- 7:0315th, using the exact same infrastructure, an
- 7:06IP address ending in 64 .99, the attack suddenly
- 7:10shifts completely away from password spraying.
- 7:12The AI agents realized that, you know, breaking
- 7:15the lock wasn't working. So they decided to just
- 7:17steal a master key instead. They targeted and
- 7:20successfully compromised a multi -tenant application
- 7:22called ConnectWise Cloud Backup. Okay. ConnectWise?
- 7:25Yeah. ConnectWise is what we call a managed service
- 7:28provider or MSP. They handle IT operations like
- 7:32data backups for thousands of small and medium
- 7:34-sized enterprises. Let's expand on this concept
- 7:37of multi -tenant applications because this is
- 7:40where the really crucial editorial lens of what
- 7:42we're looking at today comes into focus. We trust
- 7:45these third -party applications to hold our data,
- 7:47which means we give them incredibly high -level
- 7:50access to our systems. Precisely. A multi -tenant
- 7:53app means a single instance of the software serves
- 7:56multiple different customer organizations. Those
- 7:58are the tenants. Right. When a company installs
- 8:01a cloud backup solution, they have to grant that
- 8:03application permission to read. almost every
- 8:05file and directory in their entire network. Otherwise,
- 8:09you know, the backup just wouldn't work. The
- 8:11application is given an identity within the system,
- 8:14essentially a robot account that is highly, highly
- 8:17trusted. It brings me back to my earlier analogy,
- 8:20but let's take it even further. This isn't just
- 8:22sneaking past the bouncer at the front door.
- 8:25This is stealing the city health inspector's
- 8:27badge. I like that analogy. Because, I mean,
- 8:30every single restaurant in the city is legally
- 8:32obligated to let the health inspector straight
- 8:34into the kitchen, past all the locks, no questions
- 8:37asked, because they need the inspector to do
- 8:40their job so the restaurant can function. That
- 8:43is exactly what a cloud backup app is. It is
- 8:46the ultimate VIP entrance. Once Storm 0940 compromised
- 8:50those ConnectWise cloud application identities,
- 8:53the Artex AI agents completely abandoned the
- 8:56password guessing game. They didn't need to guess
- 8:58passwords anymore. They used the stolen app credentials
- 9:01to authenticate directly into the customer environments.
- 9:04And because the AI was driving the bus, the scale
- 9:07of this pivot was just as massive as the password
- 9:09spray. The agents attempted sign -ins to more
- 9:12than 2 ,250 Microsoft 365 tenants. And they maintained
- 9:17that exact same blistering pace, 2 ,900 attempts
- 9:20per minute. But this time, they weren't failing.
- 9:24No. They were walking right in. And this illustrates
- 9:26a truly chilling new paradigm for the industry.
- 9:29When an off the shelf AI agent framework lets
- 9:32a state aligned hacking group go from first targeting
- 9:35to privileged cloud access in under three hours
- 9:37across hundreds of organizations, defense stops
- 9:40being about spotting the alert and becomes about
- 9:44acting on it at machine speed. Right. And every
- 9:47trusted third party app with broad permissions
- 9:49basically becomes a door that opens just as fast.
- 9:53Organizations spend millions on securing their
- 9:55human employees, right? Multi -factor authentication,
- 9:58complex passwords, security training. Don't click
- 10:00the phishing link. Exactly. But all of that is
- 10:03bypassed when an attacker hijacks the silent,
- 10:06automated trust we give to these vendor applications.
- 10:09So how does an organization even begin to defend
- 10:12itself when the call is coming from inside the
- 10:15house? The security system sees the backup app
- 10:18logging in and says, oh, well, let's just...
- 10:20the backup app doing its daily job. There's no
- 10:22red flag. It is incredibly difficult to detect
- 10:25initially because, as you said, these applications
- 10:27are designed to operate without interactive human
- 10:30sign -ins. The AI agents were taking advantage
- 10:33of trust that had already been established within
- 10:35the Microsoft tenant. The time between the initial
- 10:38compromise of ConnectWise and the widespread
- 10:40exploitation of its downstream customers was
- 10:43virtually non -existent because the AI executed
- 10:45the pivot entirely automatically. Which brings
- 10:49us to the truly terrifying part of this whole
- 10:51thing, which is what these AI agents actually
- 10:53did once they were inside those Microsoft 365
- 10:55tenants. I mentioned at the top of the show that
- 10:58the timeline from targeting to full privileged
- 11:01access was under three hours. Under three hours,
- 11:05yeah. Think about what three hours is in a normal
- 11:07corporate IT department. That's like barely the
- 11:10morning status meeting in a coffee break. By
- 11:13the time the IT team is sitting down at their
- 11:15desks, the entire network is already compromised.
- 11:18And all of it happened without a human hacker
- 11:21typing a single command. Once inside, the AI
- 11:24agents began conducting autonomous reconnaissance
- 11:26using the Microsoft Graph API. Now, I hear a
- 11:29Graph API thrown around a lot in these security
- 11:32reports. Can you translate what that actually
- 11:35is in plain English? How was the AI using it?
- 11:37Sure. Think of the Microsoft Graph API as the
- 11:40central nervous system of a company's entire
- 11:43digital workspace. It is the programming interface
- 11:46that connects emails, chat messages, file directories,
- 11:49user profiles, organizational charts, everything.
- 11:52If you want to know who the CEO is, what files
- 11:54they accessed yesterday and who they emailed,
- 11:56you query the Graph API. The AI agents were using
- 12:00this to instantly map out the entire corporate
- 12:03structure, figuring out exactly what resources
- 12:05they had just gained access to. They are standing
- 12:08in the lobby with the building blueprints, instantly
- 12:11knowing where every sensitive room is. Yes. And
- 12:14the data shows they immediately headed for the
- 12:15most sensitive rooms, which are the Azure Key
- 12:18Vaults. Azure Key Vaults are essentially the
- 12:20master digital safes of a cloud environment.
- 12:23It is where a company stores its most critical
- 12:25secrets. We're talking encryption keys, API tokens,
- 12:29administrative passwords for other databases.
- 12:32The crown jewels. The absolute crown jewels.
- 12:35The telemetry showed bulk secret reading across
- 12:38multiple vaults by a single identity. The AI
- 12:41was performing key enumeration, which is basically
- 12:43asking the vault to list every single secret
- 12:45it holds, and then key unwrapping operations.
- 12:48And unwrapping means? Unwrapping is the process
- 12:51of decrypting those secrets so they can actually
- 12:53be used by the attacker. Okay, so the AI has
- 12:55mapped the building, it has opened the master
- 12:57safe, and has copied all the passwords. But then
- 13:00it goes a step further into what the security
- 13:02reports call... persistence. And I want to unpack
- 13:06that term because it sounds clinical, but the
- 13:09reality of what the AI was doing is, well, it's
- 13:11insidious. It wasn't just stealing data. It was
- 13:14fundamentally altering the locks from the inside.
- 13:17Persistence is the holy grail for an attacker.
- 13:21It means ensuring that even if you are discovered
- 13:23and kicked out, you don't lose access. The AI
- 13:27agents began modifying application credentials
- 13:29within the targeted victim's environments. They
- 13:32were creating what we call new service principles.
- 13:35What is a service principle, exactly? A service
- 13:38principle is simply the local identity or the
- 13:41account that an application uses to run within
- 13:43your specific network. Like we said earlier,
- 13:46it's a robot user. Right. The AI was creating
- 13:49new robot users and modifying existing ones.
- 13:52Most notably, they were exploiting OAuth app
- 13:55permissions. OAuth, like when you log into a
- 13:57site with your Google account? Exactly. It's
- 14:00the same underlying technology that lets you
- 14:02log in with Google on a random website. But for
- 14:06enterprise apps, it grants deep systemic permissions.
- 14:09The AI manipulated these settings so that the
- 14:12compromised application self -assigned highly
- 14:14privileged roles to itself. Roles like what?
- 14:18Like global administrator. Wait, global administrator.
- 14:22So it gave itself the highest possible rank in
- 14:24the entire IT department. It essentially crowned
- 14:27itself king of the network. Yes. It granted itself
- 14:31new access tokens that are entirely separate
- 14:33from the original ConnectWise vulnerability.
- 14:36Which leads to a really terrifying realization.
- 14:38Let's say a company's IT admin reads the news,
- 14:41sees that ConnectWise is compromised, and immediately
- 14:44disables the backup application. They probably
- 14:46think they are safe. But they aren't, are they?
- 14:50Exactly how long can these new AI -created backdoors
- 14:54lay dormant in the system? Indefinitely. Wow.
- 14:57And that is the true danger of automated persistence.
- 15:00These credential modifications remain active
- 15:02as a backdoor long after the original compromise
- 15:05application is remediated. The AI has cut its
- 15:08own master keys. Going back to your analogy,
- 15:11disabling the health inspector's badge doesn't
- 15:13matter if the health inspector already came inside,
- 15:16hired three new employees, and gave them their
- 15:18own keys to the backdoor. It is important to
- 15:20note, though, based on the reporting, that while
- 15:22this attack targeted a massive cross -section
- 15:25of industries globally, aerospace, defense, government.
- 15:28The mere presence of the compromised application
- 15:30doesn't automatically mean data was successfully
- 15:32stolen from every victim. The security alerts
- 15:35emphasize that successful authentication doesn't
- 15:38always equal data exfiltration. That is a crucial
- 15:42distinction. Just because they broke into the
- 15:44safe doesn't mean they had time to carry all
- 15:46the gold out before someone noticed. Right. But
- 15:49the potential exposure is catastrophic. When
- 15:51an attacker has a global administrator role,
- 15:53they have the keys to the entire kingdom. And
- 15:56because the AI is identifying and exploiting
- 15:58that access at 2 ,900 attempts a minute, human
- 16:02defenders are completely outmatched. Which forces
- 16:04us to look at the defensive realities of this
- 16:06new landscape. If an attack goes from initial
- 16:10targeting to full privileged access across hundreds
- 16:13of organizations in under three hours, the traditional
- 16:16security operations center, the SOC, is essentially
- 16:20obsolete, isn't it? It fundamentally breaks the
- 16:22traditional model. A typical SOC. operates on
- 16:25a triage system. An alert pops up on a dashboard.
- 16:28A human analyst looks at it, determines if it's
- 16:31a false positive, and then escalates it. But
- 16:33you can't triage that fast. Exactly. Human analysts
- 16:36cannot triage 2 ,900 alerts a minute. Defense
- 16:40stops being about spotting an alert on a dashboard
- 16:42and becomes about acting on that alert at machine
- 16:45speed. By the time a human analyst even opens
- 16:47the first support ticket, the AI agent has already
- 16:50mapped the directory via the graph API, self
- 16:52-assigned global admin rights, and extracted
- 16:54the Azure key vaults. So the entire operational
- 16:57reality for defenders has to change. And this
- 17:01leads to a really counterintuitive piece of advice
- 17:04in the incident response guidelines. The immediate.
- 17:07gut reaction of any IT professional when they
- 17:10hear a specific app is compromised is to just
- 17:13go into the system and delete it, you know, kill
- 17:15it with fire. Right. But the security guidance
- 17:18explicitly tells defenders not to do that as
- 17:21a first response. Why? Because deleting the enterprise
- 17:25application is the equivalent of destroying a
- 17:27crime scene before the detectives even arrive.
- 17:29If you delete the app, you wipe out vital configuration
- 17:32data and telemetry. You have to preserve the
- 17:35data in your SIEM, your security information
- 17:38and event management system. That is your centralized
- 17:41security dashboard, essentially the flight data
- 17:43recorder for your network. So if you delete the
- 17:46app, you smash the flight recorder. Exactly.
- 17:48You lose the Entra sign -in logs, Entra being
- 17:51Microsoft's identity and access management system.
- 17:53You lose the audit records, the graph API telemetry.
- 17:57You lose the breadcrumbs that tell you which
- 17:59new keys the AI cut. I see. The operational reality
- 18:03dictates that connections must be disabled to
- 18:05stop the bleeding, but the configuration must
- 18:08be preserved for forensics. You cannot delay
- 18:10urgent containment, but you can't destroy your
- 18:13own visibility either. And defenders have to
- 18:15completely shift their focus when they review
- 18:17these logs, right? It's not just about looking
- 18:19at which human employees are logging in from
- 18:21weird locations anymore. Not at all. Defenders
- 18:24have to review the service principal sign -ins,
- 18:26those automated robot accounts. They have to
- 18:28separate the successful sign -ins from the failed
- 18:30ones, looking for unfamiliar IP addresses and
- 18:33activity that happens outside the expected vendor's
- 18:36infrastructure. Looking for anomalies. Yeah,
- 18:38they need to heavily scrutinize OAuth app permissions,
- 18:41reviewing audit records for any new credentials
- 18:44added to service principals and any new privileged
- 18:47role assignments that happened right around the
- 18:49time of the compromise. It sounds like a massive...
- 18:52Needle in a haystack forensic undertaking. Which
- 18:55leads me to a really philosophical but urgently
- 18:58operational question. I'm thinking about this
- 19:01timeline again. If a smoke alarm goes off, but
- 19:05the house burns to the ground in exactly three
- 19:07seconds, what good is the alarm? Are we at the
- 19:10point where organizations have to hand the keys
- 19:12of their cybersecurity defense entirely over
- 19:14to AI agents just to keep up with the attacking
- 19:18AI agents? I believe that is the defining question
- 19:21for the next era of the cybersecurity industry.
- 19:24Right now, attackers are utilizing AI to exploit
- 19:27the trust built into our supply chains faster
- 19:29than humans can possibly revoke it. When every
- 19:33trusted third -party app with broad permissions
- 19:35becomes a door that opens at machine speed, human
- 19:38oversight just becomes a fatal bottleneck. It's
- 19:40too slow. Way too slow. We are rapidly moving
- 19:43toward a reality where AI -driven defense platforms
- 19:46are the only systems capable of detecting a 2
- 19:49,900 attempt per minute anomaly and automatically
- 19:52isolating the compromised tenant before the third
- 19:55minute even begins. It really makes you stop
- 19:57and think about the nature of the tools we are
- 19:59building in this industry. I mean, the framework
- 20:02at the very center of all of this, Artex, was
- 20:05originally built and released as an open source
- 20:07project to help companies test and improve their
- 20:10own security. It was intended to be a shield.
- 20:13It was built to help good guys find their own
- 20:15vulnerabilities before the bad guys did. But
- 20:17if the open source tools we build to defend ourselves
- 20:20are instantly co -opted and weaponized by state
- 20:24-aligned groups to attack us at machine speed,
- 20:27are we just trapped in an endless loop? Like,
- 20:30are we entering an arms race where AI forces
- 20:32both sides to move faster and faster and faster
- 20:35until human beings are entirely out of the loop
- 20:38on both the attack and the defense? It is a chilling
- 20:41thought to leave you with, but it is the unavoidable
- 20:44reality of the landscape we now operate in. The
- 20:46speed of conflict has permanently changed. Thanks
- 20:49for listening to the AI Newspaper. Visit AINewspaper
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