China-Aligned Hackers Used AI Agents to Break Into Cloud Accounts in Under Three Hours, Microsoft Says

Podcast: AI Newspaper · AI Newspaper

Opublikowano: 2026-10-23

Microsoft has attributed the ConnectWise Cloud Backup supply-chain compromise to Storm-0940, a China-state aligned group that used the open-source agentic AI framework ARTEX to automate attacks on hundreds of organizations, several reaching privileged cloud access in under three hours. A four-day password spray hit 327 Microsoft 365 accounts at eight organizations with more than 151,000 failed logons, and the group then used stolen ConnectWise app identities to reach downstream customer tenants. Microsoft says its own systems were not compromised, while ConnectWise says it has contained the affected connections but customers must separately review any existing unauthorized access.