Microsoft announced Wednesday that a hacking group aligned with the Chinese government launched cyberattacks on hundreds of organizations across the globe.
The group, known as Storm-0940, usedd an open-source AI agent framework called ARTEX since September to automate these attacks, according to Microsoft.
As early as September 2026, Storm-0940, a China-state aligned actor, used the agentic AI penetration testing framework ARTEX to automate attacks targeting hundreds of organizations globally across a broad range of industries. Several of these Storm-0940 ARTEX-driven attacks have resulted in the actor obtaining privileged access to an organization’s cloud infrastructure – including multiple instances where the time from initial targeting to privileged access was less than 3 hours. Microsoft assesses that Storm-0940 was responsible for the recently disclosed ConnectWise supply chain compromise of a multi-tenant application.
This activity demonstrates how threat actors are integrating agentic AI into existing offensive security workflows and allows them to scale their operations exponentially. Agents are not constrained by factors affecting humans – they can work around the clock, on weekends, and on holidays and attempt multiple breach paths simultaneously enabling significantly reduced time from selecting a target to achieving objectives, increasing the speed and impact of complex attacks like supply chain compromises.
Storm-0940’s use of ARTEX accelerated the speed of compromised application abuse to authenticate to Microsoft 365 customer environments through applications that had already been granted access. This allowed the threat actor to operate without requiring an interactive user sign-in. In multiple affected environments, Microsoft observed AI-accelerated follow-on activity through Microsoft Graph, including reconnaissance, application credential changes, and attempts to modify privileges that could enable expanded or persistent access. The activity conducted by the threat actor through the usage of ARTEX framework did not result from a compromise of or a vulnerability in Microsoft corporate systems, products, or services.
The China state-aligned threat actor Storm-0940 used the agentic AI penetration testing framework ARTEX to automate attacks targeting hundreds of organizations globally across a broad range of industries. Microsoft Threat Intelligence assesses that Storm-0940 was responsible for the recently disclosed ConnectWise supply chain compromise of a multitenant application. https://t.co/VXovj0jI90 Our investigation found that Storm-0940’s use of ARTEX accelerated the speed of compromised application abuse to authenticate to target environments through applications that had already been granted access, allowing the threat actor to operate without requiring an interactive user sign-in. AI-accelerated follow-on activity included reconnaissance, application credential changes, and attempts to modify privileges that could enable expanded or persistent access. Read our blog for a detailed analysis and indicators of compromise (IOCs), along with Microsoft Defender detections, protection recommendations, and guidance on investigating service principal sign-ins and unexpected application credential or privilege changes.
— Microsoft Threat Intelligence (@MsftSecIntel) October 21, 2026
Microsoft said most hacking attempts failed and that hackers couldn’t steal customer data. China’s embassy in Washington denied the attacks, calling the allegations “smears.”
The targets included government, military, aerospace and defense, energy, financial services, and technology companies, according to CyberScoop.
Microsoft detailed the severity of the attacks, noting that agentic AI bots “are not constrained by factors affecting humans — they can work around the clock, on weekends, and on holidays and attempt multiple breach paths simultaneously.”
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This report marks the latest incident in which Chinese hackers use artificial intelligence as a weapon. In September, it was revealed that the hackers were running AI programs on stolen networks to steal information from various organizations.
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