A hacker broke into John Deere and SharkNinja with an army of AI agents

Norforge, an AI security firm, found exposed work from Cairn, an open-source AI platform, indicating that a hacker used largely autonomous AI agents to breach more than 100 websites. Reuters reported that the affected organizations included John Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins. Norforge identified the attacker as the most active operator among exposed Cairn instances and said the campaign targeted companies in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan. Cairn describes itself as a general-purpose problem-solving engine that lets users define starting and ending points for AI agents, which record their progress while completing tasks. Norforge said the same system can be used to orchestrate cyberattacks. Reuters reported that the attacker specified preferred intrusion tactics in fewer than 100 Chinese characters and that successful breaches took about 23 hours. Norforge found more than 20 exposed Cairn instances it considers likely malicious and said it is working to have them taken down. John Deere told Reuters it had no indication that sensitive information was accessed. SharkNinja said a standalone product-support site was affected and that it contained the threat. Cummins said it was investigating a reported potential attack on a website run by a third-party vendor. Cairn creator @le1xia0 said the platform was never intended as a hacking tool and that misuse is a human decision.