Microsoft: China-linked hackers used superintelligence to attack hundreds of organizations worldwide

Microsoft's security research and threat intelligence team said that the China state-linked hacking group Storm-0940 used the AI penetration tool ARTEX in September this year to launch automated attacks on hundreds of organizations worldwide, with some attacks giving it privileged access to cloud infrastructure. The report said that in multiple attacks, less than three hours passed from initial targeting to obtaining privileged access, and that targets spanned aerospace, defense, automotive, energy, financial services, government, media, semiconductors and think tanks. Microsoft also linked the group to a supply chain compromise of ConnectWise's multi-tenant application; ConnectWise CEO Rivero said the affected application connections had been disabled and are being restored in phases, but unauthorized access that may already have been established within customer tenants must be checked one by one. ARTEX was originally used to test network and system security and can combine different AI models to automatically carry out network reconnaissance, vulnerability probing and data theft. A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the United States told Reuters that China opposes and cracks down on illegal hacking activities, and also opposes using cybersecurity issues as a pretext to smear and attack China.