NorForge finds exposed Cairn panels steering AI agents in criminal hacking campaigns

Researchers at NorForge said in an Oct. 19 report that they found more than 20 publicly exposed control panels for Cairn, an AI-powered hacking system that coordinates AI agents to probe a target, look for security weaknesses and try to break in, that they judged likely to be in malicious use; all appeared financially motivated, with no obvious state-sponsored activity. The largest cluster, Chinese-language and labeled AIA0001 by NorForge, ran over 1,100 attack projects across 14 panels, mostly against e-commerce and payment sites in the US, Japan and Australia, and the researchers estimate the average success rate for the harnesses they saw at around 10%, with many other tasks reaching partial goals. NorForge says it is cooperating with Reuters to notify victims and trying to get the panels taken down.