From August–September 2026, Chinese-speaking attackers used an open-source AI penetration testing framework called Cairn to autonomously conduct 25 operations against at least 19 organizations. The attackers weaponized Cairn by pairing it with Chinese AI models Zhipu GLM and DeepSeek.
The attackers supplied a target and a goal, then Cairn planned, executed and recorded results on its own. These attacks achieved unauthorized access or data retrieval at 10 of the targeted organizations, including:
- Accessing dozens of valid credentials
- Mass exposing personal data (exceeding one million records at one organization)
- Retrieving military and government identities
- Creating persistent administrator accounts in a production system
- Modifying a live industry standards-ballot document
Read more…
Source: Palo Alto Unit 42
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- Apple patches 50 security flaws – update now
November 5, 2025
Apple has released security updates for iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, Apple TVs, Safari, and Xcode, fixing nearly 50 security flaws. Some of these bugs could let cybercriminals see your private data, take control of parts of your device, or break key security protections. Installing these updates as soon as possible keeps your personal information—and everything ...
- Operation South Star: 0-day Espionage Campaign Targeting Domestic Mobile Phones
November 4, 2025
In recent years, during high-intensity confrontations with Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups from the Northeast Asia region, the RedDrip team at QiAnXin Threat Intelligence Center has discovered nearly 20 0day vulnerabilities involving domestic software. Some details have been disclosed in our public reports such as Operation DevilTiger, Operation ShadowTiger, and XSS 0day+Clickonce. In reality, 0day activities ...
- Phone location data of top EU officials available for sale
November 4, 2025
Journalists in Europe found it was “easy” to spy on top European Union officials using commercially obtained location histories sold by data brokers, despite the continent having some of the strongest data protection laws in the world. EU officials said they’re “concerned” about the trade of citizen and officials’ mobile phone location data, and have issued ...
- SesameOp: Novel backdoor uses OpenAI Assistants API for command and control
November 3, 2025
Microsoft Incident Response – Detection and Response Team (DART) researchers uncovered a new backdoor that is notable for its novel use of the OpenAI Assistants Application Programming Interface (API) as a mechanism for command-and-control (C2) communications. Instead of relying on more traditional methods, the threat actor behind this backdoor abuses OpenAI as a C2 channel as ...
- University of Pennsylvania says it has called FBI over data breach
November 3, 2025
The University of Pennsylvania says it has called in the Federal Bureau of Investigation after offensive emails were distributed to alumni. In a statement, the university said that a data breach had affected “select information systems.” An email sent to University of Pennsylvania alumni on Friday and reviewed by Reuters showed that someone masquerading as the ...
- US government warns Linux CVE-2024-1086 flaw is now being exploited for ransomware attacks
November 3, 2025
The US government is warning that a Linux flaw introduced more than a decade ago – and fixed more than a year ago – is being actively used in ransomware attacks. In February 2014, a vulnerability was introduced into the Linux kernel via a commit. The bug was first disclosed in late January 2024, and described ...