A researcher at security firm NorForge has discovered that a Chinese-speaking criminal launched autonomous AI agents through Carin, a general-purpose problem-solving engine that can coordinate AI agents for a specific task, including penetration testing, toward 1,200 targeted sites, and was able to break into over 100 of them with “almost no help” because website operators had “left their control panels open on the internet.”
The operator gave the AI agents simple tactics, “and the agents went from there.” They were able to break into the websites in an average of 23 hours and used the DeepSeek and Claude Code products.
Some tips to defend against this type of campaign include:
- Exposed panels. Agent control panels of this kind often answer on port 8000, so an exposed one without a login is worth hunting for.
- Stray upload forms. An unexpected file-upload form sitting in a hidden directory is the foothold these agents aimed for.
- Magento patching. A worker directory NorForge browsed held a proof-of-concept for a critical Magento flaw, StyleSmuggler (CVE-2026-75650), and a test lab for it. There is no evidence it was used in these break-ins, but any shop still on an affected build should apply Adobe’s hotfix for it: Adobe Commerce 2.4.4 through 2.4.9, or Magento Open Source 2.4.6 through 2.4.9.