{"slug": "china-backed-threat-group-used-agentic-ai-pentesting-tool-to-compromise-140-in", "title": "China-backed threat group used agentic AI pentesting tool to compromise 140 sensitive targets in 11 days", "summary": "A China state-backed threat group tracked by CrowdStrike as Vapor Panda used the agentic AI penetration-testing framework ARTEX, paired with DeepSeek, to compromise about 140 sensitive targets in 11 days, targeting more than 200 organizations in at least 14 countries since Oct. 17, CrowdStrike said in a Thursday threat report. CrowdStrike told CyberScoop roughly 70% of Vapor Panda's targets were confirmed compromised or showed moderate-confidence evidence of intrusion, with victims including foreign ministries, a European country's presidency and prime minister's office, defense and intelligence agencies, 19 U.S.-based organizations in the pharmaceutical, semiconductor, defense, nuclear and financial sectors, and telecom providers in the United States, Belgium and the Philippines. \"Now, with ARTEX, we could see it exceed 1,500 commands an hour,\" said Adam Meyers, senior vice president of counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike, versus up to 40 commands per hour in typical hands-on-keyboard activity, as CrowdStrike counted roughly 45 agentic adversary attacks in September and 126 for October.", "body_md": "# China-backed threat group used agentic AI pentesting tool to compromise 140 sensitive targets in 11 days\n\nA China state-backed threat group is using ARTEX, the automated agentic AI penetration testing framework, to achieve remarkable speed, scale and success in a campaign that already compromised about 140 sensitive targets in 11 days, according to CrowdStrike.\n\nThe threat group, which CrowdStrike tracks as Vapor Panda, targeted more than 200 organizations in at least 14 countries since Oct. 17, the security company said in a [threat report](https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/blog/vapor-panda-uses-artex-to-scale-global-campaign/) Thursday. Targets and confirmed victims include foreign ministries, a European country’s presidency and prime minister’s office, defense and intelligence agencies; 19 U.S.-based organizations in the pharmaceutical, semiconductor, defense, nuclear and financial sectors; and telecom providers in the United States, Belgium and the Philippines. \n\nCrowdStrike told CyberScoop about 70% of Vapor Panda’s targets were confirmed compromised or had evidence indicating moderate confidence of a successful intrusion.\n\nVapor Panda’s use of ARTEX, paired with DeepSeek, allowed it to accomplish more tasks with shocking speed — requests occurring as often as every 10 seconds — and pursue multiple attack paths concurrently.\n\n“This is the first time that we’re seeing an agentic adversary nation-state threat actor at this scale, and I think that this is probably, unfortunately, something we’ll see more of,” Adam Meyers, senior vice president of counter adversary operations at CrowdStrike, told CyberScoop.\n\nHands-on-keyboard activity tracked by CrowdStrike for the past 15 years typically involved up to 40 commands per hour. “Now, with ARTEX, we could see it exceed 1,500 commands an hour,” Meyers said.\n\n“If you diversify that across 200 targets, it costs them very little to run a mass-exploitation campaign and drop a websell,” he added. “They can hit more targets in a faster period of time.”\n\nVapor Panda’s broad-access campaign, which remains active, has targeted think tanks and government agencies spanning defense, justice, finance and diplomacy.\n\n“I would characterize it as a diverse operational mission that tends to focus on sectors and geographies that Beijing considers economically or politically important,” Meyers said.\n\nThe active campaign attributed to Vapor Panda is separate from the ARTEX activity Microsoft Threat Intelligence [attributed to Storm-0940](https://cyberscoop.com/microsoft-attributes-connectwise-supply-chain-attack-china-storm-0940/) earlier this month, including a [supply-chain attack targeting ConnectWise](https://cyberscoop.com/connectwise-cloud-backup-supply-chain-attack/) customers. \n\nAdversarial use of AI is relatively new, yet also quickly becoming the new normal, Meyers said. “We’re scrambling because we’re seeing so many of these agentic adversaries.”\n\nAgentic AI use for malicious purposes is growing month-over-month at a rate of almost threefold. CrowdStrike observed roughly 45 agentic adversary attacks in September and it’s already at 126 for October, and climbing.\n\nAdversarial use of agentic AI isn’t an intractable problem, but rather another reminder that organizations need visibility into their endpoints, identities and cross-domain capabilities, Meyers said.\n\nThese attacks aren’t showcasing anything new, “it’s just doing it at a speed and scale that we’re unaccustomed to,” he said. “It’s not hopeless, but you’ve got to take action. You can’t put your head in the sand.”", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-backed-threat-group-used-agentic-ai-pentesting-tool-to-compromise-140-in", "canonical_source": "https://cyberscoop.com/china-vapor-panda-agentic-ai-artex-campaign-crowdstrike/", "published_at": "2026-10-30 21:30:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-30 21:50:21.245391+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-safety", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["CrowdStrike", "Vapor Panda", "ARTEX", "DeepSeek", "Adam Meyers", "Microsoft Threat Intelligence", "Storm-0940", "ConnectWise"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-backed-threat-group-used-agentic-ai-pentesting-tool-to-compromise-140-in", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-backed-threat-group-used-agentic-ai-pentesting-tool-to-compromise-140-in.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-backed-threat-group-used-agentic-ai-pentesting-tool-to-compromise-140-in.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-backed-threat-group-used-agentic-ai-pentesting-tool-to-compromise-140-in.jsonld"}}