Criminal hackers utilized artificial intelligence to identify a previously unknown software flaw, marking the first instance of AI being used in this manner. Google reported that this attempted cyberattack indicates potential future threats in cybersecurity.

On February 17, 2026, a malicious version of the Cline package was published to npm, which included a code change in the package.json file that executed a post-install command to install OpenClaw, an AI agent with full system access. This led to approximately 4,000 developer machines being compromised as users installed or updated the Cline package without consent.