A hacking group linked to Kazakhstan used artificial intelligence (AI) to steal more than 2,000 national security-related documents from neighboring Tajikistan, cybersecurity firm CloudSek said in a report published Wednesday.
The Singapore-based company said it discovered the cyber espionage group using Hermes, an open-source framework for autonomous AI agents, after the hackers accidentally left a server exposed to the internet, Reuters reports.
Reuters had previously reported on cybercriminals assigning hacking operations to autonomous AI agents. CloudSek said its latest findings showed that more sophisticated, espionage-focused hackers were also outsourcing their cyberattacks to AI.
“Instead of typing hacking commands by hand, the attacker told Hermes what to do, and Hermes planned the attacks, wrote the rules, ran them, kept notes, and wrote up reports,” CloudSek told Reuters.
Government officials in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to CloudSek, the recovered data showed that the hackers began using Hermes for reconnaissance around mid-August before breaking into Tajikistan’s electronic document system a few weeks later.
The AI agent subsequently developed a customized program to download the files, organize them and divide them into smaller sections to facilitate their theft, the company said.
The exposed data also included instructions given by the hackers to their AI agent, outlining how it should identify itself, operate and communicate with its operators.
“You are an elite offensive security specialist and red teamer,” the instructions stated. A red teamer is a cybersecurity professional who simulates covert attacks to test an organization’s security systems.
CloudSek identified the hackers as members of a group known as “Silent Lynx”, which other researchers have linked to Kazakhstan.
The company said it found evidence that the hackers spoke Russian, operated during Kazakh business hours and frequently accessed the exposed server through a residential internet connection in Kazakhstan.
Attempts to contact Silent Lynx were unsuccessful.
News.Az
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