incidentsIn brief · · · Written with AI
Microsoft says a Chinese group used AI agents to attack hundreds of organisations
According to its report, the Storm-0940 group automated its attacks with the ARTEX tool and in several cases gained privileged cloud access in under three hours.
On 21 October, Microsoft published a report on Storm-0940, a group it considers aligned with the Chinese state. According to the company, since September the group has used ARTEX, an open-source penetration-testing tool that runs on AI agents, to automate attacks on hundreds of organisations in sectors such as defence, energy, finance and government.
Most of the attempts failed. But several gained privileged access to their targets' cloud, in some cases in under three hours. Microsoft believes the group is behind the recent supply-chain attack on ConnectWise. After it, the group's agents tried to get into more than 2,250 customer environments, at a rate of 2,900 attempts per minute.
Microsoft notes that getting in doesn't necessarily mean any data was accessed.
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- AI-driven, large-scale nation-state campaign using ARTEX enables supply chain compromiseAccessed 22 October 2026 · Image: Microsoft
