Criminals turned AI agents loose to break into websites on their own
- At a glance: Cairn AI agents broke into websites: 1,100+ attack projects
- Date: 2026-10-19
- Reported by: NorForge, The Hacker News
- Status: Sources: a security firm's investigation and press coverage. Costs are the researchers' estimates.
On October 19, 2026, security firm NorForge published an investigation into criminals using Cairn, an AI-powered hacking system. Given a target and an objective, it coordinates AI agents to investigate the target, and they post findings to a shared blackboard. The Hacker News reports that Cairn is an open-source tool built for authorized penetration testing.
Using Shodan and Censys to find publicly exposed Cairn web interfaces, NorForge found more than 20 likely malicious panels across three financially motivated activity clusters. One cluster alone had over 1,100 attack projects across 14 dashboards.
The average success rate hovered around 10%, and many other tasks reached partial goals. Successful tasks took a little under 23 hours on average from start to goal, and one project ran for more than five days. NorForge estimates the average cost per task at around $5, with considerable uncertainty.
Victims included an Australian e-commerce site and a Japanese retailer, and NorForge is working with Reuters to notify them. The Hacker News, citing Reuters, says the agents reached the websites of more than 100 companies.
Sources: a security firm's investigation and press coverage. Costs are the researchers' estimates.
Sources
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