Open-source Cairn agents carried out intrusions unaided, researcher says

What happened?

1. A researcher claimed, in a report handed to Reuters before its Monday publication, that a hacker employed AI agents, along with a few thousand dollars, to breach websites owned by over 100 companies, among them Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins.
2. The hacker outsourced the intrusion work almost entirely to AI agents that spent hours autonomously probing and breaking into targeted sites, Fagerland said
3. Deere told Reuters it took "necessary remediation actions" and had "no indication that sensitive information was accessed"; SharkNinja said the hit was limited to a standalone product support site and the threat was contained; Cummins said it was "investigating the report of a potential cyber-attack on a website"
4. IT News reported that e-commerce sites in Australia, Canada, the United States and Japan were among the targets

A researcher alleged that a hacker used AI agents built on Cairn, an open-source AI problem-solving platform, to autonomously probe and break into websites at more than 100 companies over about two weeks. Fagerland said he located roughly two dozen inadvertently exposed Cairn instances being used for malicious activity from around October 2, and described the campaign as evidence that commercially available AI agents can complete complex intrusions without human intervention. Reuters said it identified victims including Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins through the hacker's Cairn activity.

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