CrowdStrike says a threat actor it tracks as Vapor Panda used agentic AI to accelerate a campaign against more than 200 organizations in 14 countries. The activity targeted technology, manufacturing, finance, government and telecommunications organizations.
The attackers paired the ARTEX framework with DeepSeek models to automate reconnaissance and post-exploitation tasks. CrowdStrike observed the system issuing more than 1,500 commands per hour, far above the pace of a human operator, while people still directed objectives and selected targets. The company confirmed post-exploitation activity at nine organizations.
This is the future. I strongly believe that within the next three months, the type of attack documented by CrowdStrike is going to become the new normal.
OpenAI models and attack frameworks are readily available. What a lot of people don’t understand is that you can carry out these types of attacks with commodity hardware. You don’t need a massive data center. It might be slower, but it can still be done. And I think threat actors have absolutely started recognizing that.
Everybody needs to be prepared. Reduce your external attack surface as much as possible, and use deception throughout your environment to establish tripwires. Give yourself a way to detect attackers when they get past your other defenses.
Ryan McCurdy, Vice President of Marketing at Liquibase, said:
The speed and scale at which attackers can now operate is unlike anything we’ve seen before.
A single operator can direct AI agents to execute more than 1,500 commands an hour, targeting multiple organizations at once. That’s a very different threat environment than what most security teams were built to handle.
Companies have spent years building security processes that depend on people reviewing activity, identifying risks, and intervening when something goes wrong. Those processes weren’t designed for machines operating at this speed.
And the challenge isn’t limited to attackers. As companies give AI agents more responsibility across software development and IT operations, they need to rethink where and how controls are enforced.
Human oversight will still be important, but it can’t be the only line of defense. Organizations need policies that are enforced automatically, before an agent can make a change that puts critical systems at risk.
The campaign underscores why security teams need to reduce exposed services, automate containment and enforce controls before autonomous systems can make consequential changes.
