Threat Intel Firm Vulone Discloses Large-Scale Cyberattacks on Asian Governments Using AI Agent Framework Cairn
Vulone reports that a China-linked hacker group used the open-source AI agent framework Cairn and DeepSeek models to launch 66 autonomous cyberattacks against government agencies in Taiwan, Vietnam, and other Asian nations between September and October, with 48 successfully gaining system access.
Threat intelligence firm Vulone published an investigation report on October 18, 2026, revealing that a China-linked, financially motivated hacker organization utilized the open-source AI agent framework Cairn to launch large-scale network intrusions against government agencies and enterprises across multiple Asian countries between September 24 and October 14, 2026. The report indicates that the group conducted 66 attack operations, 48 of which successfully obtained access to target systems, covering regions including Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, and India.
The core aspect attracting researchers' attention was the deployment of autonomous AI agents to execute actual intrusion tasks. The attack platform was built on the Cairn framework, where a central Dispatcher scheduled multiple Kali Linux-based containerized worker nodes according to set goals, leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to assist in system reconnaissance, exploitation, and post-intrusion data collection. According to Vulone's analysis, the model used by attackers was DeepSeek V4.1 Flash. The platform ran up to 116 containers simultaneously at peak times, logged approximately 230,000 events over 12 days, and consumed about 36.7 billion tokens cumulatively. To reduce AI computing costs, the attackers also rotated through six LLM subscription accounts and sixteen CodeBuddy accounts to obtain free compute credits.
Taiwan was one of the primary targets. Regarding government institutions, hackers exploited CGI command injection vulnerabilities to breach the legal system of Taiwan's Legislative Yuan, obtaining system command execution privileges. They also uploaded WebShells to Ministry of Justice-related systems via unauthenticated file management weaknesses. Additionally, attackers penetrated third-party vendor applications and conducted activities on outdated CentOS servers within the Investigation Bureau. On the enterprise side, the bulk messaging service platform Every8D became a key target; hackers exploited the Shellshock vulnerability (CVE-2014-6271) to compromise its mail gateway, stealing Apache host configurations and internal SQL Server database credentials. China Airlines' cargo-related systems faced up to 1,001 intrusion attempts, briefly resulting in JSP Shell access.