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Chinese-speaking hacker used AI agents to break into sites of 100+ companies for about US$5000

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Source: Reuters via iTnews

A Chinese-speaking hacker used AI agents running on the open-source Cairn platform to break into websites belonging to more than 100 companies, including Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins, according to a report by Snorre Fagerland, principal threat researcher at the security company NorForge, and Reuters, which identified the victims from the hacker’s Cairn activity. From 25 September the hacker targeted ecommerce sites in the US, Canada, Australia and Japan with instructions of fewer than 100 Chinese characters. The agents attempted more than 1200 sites. Successful intrusions typically took around 23 hours. Fagerland estimated the campaign, which appeared to use a mixture of DeepSeek and Anthropic’s Claude Code, spent roughly US$5000 on tokens, or about US$50 per successful hack. Reuters could not establish how much data was extracted. Deere said it had no indication that sensitive information was accessed; SharkNinja said the hack hit a standalone product-support site; Cummins said it was investigating a potential attack on a third-party vendor’s website.

Why it matters

Fagerland said the campaign is evidence that commercially available AI agents can carry out complex intrusions from start to finish without human intervention, which lets a single attacker hit more than 100 companies.

When
20 Oct 2026
ID
WTA-N-2026-0336
Who
NorForge, Deere, SharkNinja, Cummins, Anthropic, DeepSeek; Snorre Fagerland
System
AI agents on the Cairn platform (DeepSeek and Claude Code models)
Operator
Chinese-speaking hacker
Type
cyber attack on more than 100 company websites
Status
disclosed; Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins responded; disclosed by NorForge; Reuters · Incident ledger

Summary by wheresthe.ai, from Reuters via iTnews. Checked against the source on 20 Oct 2026.

Read the original at Reuters via iTnews

Source copy: download the page as saved on 20 Oct 2026 (PDF). Also held by the Internet Archive.

Next stop on this Storyline: Elsewhere: InternationalRansomware affiliates ran intrusions through AI agents, an exposed server shows

Cite this story

WTA-N-2026-0336: “Chinese-speaking hacker used AI agents to break into sites of 100+ companies for about US$5000.” wheresthe.ai, 20 Oct 2026. https://wheresthe.ai/d/us-chinese-speaking-hacker-used-ai-agents-to-break-into-site-2026-10/ (source: Reuters via iTnews).

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