(CNN) — Hackers deployed an AI system to carry out sophisticated cyberattacks on Taiwan, officials said, in what experts believe is the first known fully autonomous attack on government agencies.
Over four days in July, the AI agents were able to map 21 government systems, crack 85 government user accounts, and extract 2,500 personnel records, according to Dream, an Israeli AI firm that first discovered the attack.
Experts suspect the hackers are from China, but neither Taiwan, nor Dream would confirm the origin of the July attacks.
“The investigation found clear indications that the attacks originated overseas and involved a hybrid approach in which hackers combined conventional operations with AI agents such as OpenClaw,” Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs said in a Thursday statement.
The hackers’ system was built using open-source AI agents to automate and coordinate much of the intrusion, including reconnaissance, credential attacks and strategizing subsequent attack paths, Dream said. The Financial Times first reported the case on Wednesday.
The attack comes amid an increasing number of reports of advanced AI models engaging in unauthorized actions, raising fears of the proliferation of AI-enabled cyberattacks and prompting calls for more government action to regulate AI.
According to Kenny Huang, chairman of the Taiwan Network Information Center, this is believed to be the first disclosed case of a fully automated attack against a government.
Using AI to write code and search for vulnerabilities in cyberattacks has become common. But this incident went significantly further.
In this case, an autonomous system coordinating up to eight AI agents – carrying out intrusions and deciding what to do next without human intervention – effectively ran a hacking campaign rather than just merely assisting a human hacker.
“It spells out one thing loudly – the cost of running a competent attack has collapsed, but the cost of defending against one has not,” a blog post by Dream said.
Amir Becker, Dream’s chief business and strategy officer, said the way the AI system operated in this latest case was alarming.
“Like a human team, when an approach gets blocked, it researches new techniques in real time and adapts. It’s an attacker that strategizes, learns, and adjusts on its own,” he said.
The attack also extended to Taiwan’s nuclear safety agency and the government’s IT vendors as well as at least seven other energy sector companies.
The AI agents were able to quickly combine different hacking techniques and exploit vulnerabilities in secondary systems, allowing the attacks to be carried out faster, more cheaply and on a much larger scale, said the Taiwanese digital affairs ministry.
The use of simplified Chinese, used in China, found in internal documents linked to the hack suggests a high probability that the instigator, whether public or private, is linked to China, experts said.
CNN has reached out to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Taiwan Affairs Office, and Cyberspace Administration for comment.
Taiwan is no stranger to cyberattacks, particularly from neighboring China, which claims the East Asian democracy as its own and has vowed to annex it, by force if necessary. Last year, Taiwan was subject to an average of 2.6 million cyberattacks a day from China, a 6% increase from 2024, according to a government report.
As Beijing has stepped up its pressure campaign against Taipei in recent years, Taiwanese officials have said their democracy stands at the forefront of China’s “hybrid warfare,” facing disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks and near-daily military exercises around Taiwan.
Huang of the Taiwan Network Information Center said the July incident demonstrated that AI has become the main player in cybersecurity beyond simply assisting human hackers in partial automation tasks.
He said it raised the question of whether the world was ready with defensive strategies for AI, including the necessary legal frameworks, technical capabilities and policies.
“I believe there are still significant gaps. Every country, not just Taiwan, is still unprepared in this respect,” he said.
The-CNN-Wire
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