{"slug": "china-linked-hackers-used-an-ai-agent-to-breach-connectwise-and-hit-msps", "title": "China-linked hackers used an AI agent to breach ConnectWise and hit MSPs", "summary": "Microsoft said on October 21 that it tied a China state-aligned group it calls Storm-0940 to a breach of ConnectWise's Cloud Backup service, in which attackers stole the application's own OAuth credential and attempted sign-ins against more than 2,250 Microsoft 365 tenants at roughly 2,900 attempts per minute. Huntress, which first detected the activity, confirmed unauthorized sign-ins at 162 tenants by October 16 and found nearly 1,000 tenants hit by sign-in attempts from the attacker's infrastructure, with more than 300 showing a successful login; ConnectWise disabled Cloud Backup and six other application identities on October 17 and revoked the certificates behind the compromised credential. Microsoft attributed the speed — initial targeting to privileged cloud access in under three hours in some cases — to Storm-0940 running the intrusion through ARTEX, an open-source Go-based penetration-testing framework built to let AI agents handle reconnaissance, credential attacks and data theft with minimal human steering.", "body_md": "*A stolen credential inside one IT vendor's backup app let a Chinese state-aligned hacking group try to break into more than 2,250 companies in a matter of hours, many of which had no idea ConnectWise was even in their supply chain.*\n\nMicrosoft said on October 21 that it has tied a nation-state group it calls Storm-0940 to a breach of ConnectWise's Cloud Backup service, the tool formerly known as SkyKick that thousands of managed service providers use to back up client email, files and Microsoft Teams data. The attackers stole the app's own credential, the one ConnectWise uses to authenticate to customer Microsoft 365 tenants on its own behalf, and used it to log in as the app itself. No password. No multi-factor prompt. Just a trusted identity that nobody thought to watch.\n\nHuntress, the security firm that first caught the activity, confirmed unauthorized sign-ins at 162 tenants by October 16. Microsoft's own numbers, published five days later, are far larger: Storm-0940 attempted sign-ins against more than 2,250 Microsoft 365 tenants, at a rate of roughly 2,900 attempts per minute. Huntress separately found nearly 1,000 tenants that had received sign-in attempts from the attacker's infrastructure, with more than 300 showing a successful login. ConnectWise disabled Cloud Backup along with six other application identities, including parts of its Cloud Management and SaaS Security lines, on October 17, and revoked the certificates behind the compromised credential.\n\nThis wasn't a software bug. A CVE patch doesn't fix a stolen OAuth credential that was already trusted by every tenant where the app had been installed. That's the uncomfortable mechanic of a supply-chain breach through an IT vendor: the compromise happens one layer up from you, inside a company you may never have heard of, and it arrives through a connection you approved months or years ago and then forgot about. If your MSP uses ConnectWise Cloud Backup, Cloud Management or SaaS Security to touch your Microsoft 365 tenant, the exposure runs through your MSP's relationship with ConnectWise, not through anything you did wrong.\n\nMicrosoft says the speed is what sets this one apart. In some cases, attackers went from initial targeting to privileged access over a company's cloud infrastructure in under three hours. That pace is the result of Storm-0940 running the intrusion through ARTEX, an open-source, Go-based penetration-testing framework built to let AI agents handle reconnaissance, credential attacks and data theft with minimal human steering, according to Microsoft's security blog. Humans still picked the targets. The agent did the rest, at a volume no team of analysts could match by hand.\n\n[A Lone Hacker Used AI Agents to Breach More Than 100 Companies](https://startupfortune.com/a-lone-hacker-used-ai-agents-to-breach-more-than-100-companies/)\n\nNorForge researcher Snorre Fagerland stumbled on the hacker's exposed Cairn server by accident while scanning the internet. Victims include Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins, hit across four countries in a campaign that began September 25. - [how to breach companies with AI hacking agents](https://startupfortune.com/a-lone-hacker-used-ai-agents-to-breach-more-than-100-companies/) - [single hacker using autonomous AI for cyberattacks](https://startupfortune.com/a-lone-hacker-used-ai-agents-to-breach-more-than-100-companies/)\n\nMicrosoft describes Storm-0940 as a China state-aligned group that has been active since 2021, focused on data theft, with no widely known public alias. That puts this breach in the same shape as SolarWinds and the Kaseya ransomware incident before it: compromise one vendor that sits inside thousands of downstream networks, and the blast radius multiplies instantly. Affected organizations span MSPs themselves, law firms, and entities tied to national security and trade, according to reporting from Cybernews and The Register. Critical infrastructure operators are also among the confirmed targets.\n\n## What MSP customers should check right now\n\nIf your company or your portfolio companies use a ConnectWise-managed MSP, the first question isn't whether you were targeted. At this scale, assume you were in the attempt pool and find out whether the attempt succeeded. Ask the MSP directly whether Cloud Backup, Cloud Management or SaaS Security were running on your tenant, and ask for the sign-in logs from October 15 through 17, the window Microsoft and Huntress have pinned the activity to. ConnectWise's trust center is publishing advisories as the investigation continues, and Huntress has released indicators of compromise that any competent IT team can run against Microsoft 365 audit logs in an afternoon.\n\nFounders tend to treat the MSP relationship as a solved problem once it's set up. The IT headache goes away, the bill arrives monthly, and nobody thinks about it again. This breach is the bill for that assumption. A small company with no in-house security team is exactly the kind of target that becomes invisible collateral in an attack built for scale, not precision. Storm-0940 wasn't hunting any one of those 2,250 tenants specifically. It was running an agent against as many doors as it could reach, and whoever's door opened got the same treatment regardless of size.\n\nConnectWise has not said when Cloud Backup will come back online. Scheduled backups aren't running, archived data isn't reachable, and restores aren't possible until the service returns, which leaves MSP customers newly aware of a security incident and newly unable to pull their own backup data to check what, if anything, it shows.\n\n**Also read:** [MeetingTV sues Palo Alto Networks over an AI-invented Chinese spy ring](https://startupfortune.com/meetingtv-sues-palo-alto-networks-over-an-ai-invented-chinese-spy-ring/) • [Marathon Fusion Says It Turned Mercury Into Gold, No Proof Yet](https://startupfortune.com/marathon-fusion-says-it-turned-mercury-into-gold-no-proof-yet/) • [China opposes US DeepSeek ban as it drafts its own export controls](https://startupfortune.com/china-opposes-us-deepseek-ban-as-it-drafts-its-own-export-controls/)\n\n*This article is posted in [Technology News](https://startupfortune.com/category/technology/), check it out for more related stories.*\n\n## Join the discussion\n\n[Open in the community →](https://startupfortune.com/community/)\n\nAlmost there. Sign in and your reply posts straight away.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-linked-hackers-used-an-ai-agent-to-breach-connectwise-and-hit-msps", "canonical_source": "https://startupfortune.com/china-linked-hackers-used-an-ai-agent-to-breach-connectwise-and-hit-msps/", "published_at": "2026-10-22 18:24:02+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-22 18:44:42.020466+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-safety", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["Microsoft", "Storm-0940", "ConnectWise", "ConnectWise Cloud Backup", "Huntress", "ARTEX", "Microsoft 365", "SkyKick"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-linked-hackers-used-an-ai-agent-to-breach-connectwise-and-hit-msps", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-linked-hackers-used-an-ai-agent-to-breach-connectwise-and-hit-msps.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-linked-hackers-used-an-ai-agent-to-breach-connectwise-and-hit-msps.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/china-linked-hackers-used-an-ai-agent-to-breach-connectwise-and-hit-msps.jsonld"}}