Microsoft ties ConnectWise breach to China-aligned group using ARTEX AI agents

A China-state aligned group that Microsoft tracks as Storm-0940 used ARTEX, an open-source agentic AI penetration testing framework, to automate attacks on hundreds of organizations and assesses that the group was responsible for the compromise of ConnectWise Cloud Backup, Microsoft said on Wednesday, October 21. Several of the attacks gave the group privileged access to cloud infrastructure, including multiple cases where the time from initial targeting to privileged access was under three hours, according to Microsoft.

After gaining control of the identities of ConnectWise cloud applications, AI agents acting for the group authenticated to Microsoft 365 customer environments through apps that had already been granted access, so no interactive user sign-in was needed, Microsoft said. In some environments, the agents went on to run reconnaissance through Microsoft Graph, change application credentials and attempt privilege changes. Storm-0940 used ARTEX to try to sign in to more than 2,250 tenants at 2,900 sign-in attempts per minute, the company said. Microsoft said most of the targeting was unsuccessful, that the activity did not stem from a flaw in its own systems, and that an affected app or a successful sign-in does not by itself mean data was accessed.

Targets spanned aerospace and defense, energy, financial services, government, legal, semiconductors and other sectors, Reuters reported, citing Microsoft. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to Reuters, and Beijing regularly denies conducting or condoning cyber-enabled data theft, Reuters noted.

ConnectWise said on its Trust Center that, based on evidence including threat intelligence shared by Microsoft, “it appears that a China state-aligned group was responsible” for the attack. In an update on Thursday, October 22, the company said phased restoration of Cloud Backup, formerly SkyKick, was advancing with security validation at each step, that partners should keep affected connections disabled until formal instructions arrive, and that existing backup archives remain encrypted and isolated with no indication of compromise. ConnectWise first discovered the problem on October 14, it said.

Microsoft said threat actors in multiple regions are using ARTEX, which it describes as a multi-agent system that can run a penetration test from reconnaissance through data exfiltration with little human interaction. AITD reported on October 6 that South Korean police were tracking traces of ARTEX in a probe into AI-assisted bank hacks, according to Korea JoongAng Daily.

Microsoft ties ConnectWise breach to China-aligned group using ARTEX AI agents

Sources