A Hacktron researcher argues that AI-assisted vulnerability research is rapidly widening the enterprise attack surface. He cites recent breaches at Vercel and GitHub and a wave of critical CVEs in F5, Fortinet, Cisco, Palo Alto and ImageMagick. According to the author, the Vercel compromise began with a breach of the AI platform Context.a…
Throughout October 2026, Wiz observed an actor using tooling associated with ARTEX, an open-source autonomous AI penetration-testing framework, against multiple IT and software vendors. The activity targeted identity providers (Okta, Entra ID, AWS Cognito) and Microsoft 365 integrations, with repeated attempts to bypass authentication, en…
Check Point Research reports active exploitation of two critical PHP engine vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, collectively called PHP2Shell. Details leaked ahead of planned disclosure, and screenshots of a PHP2Shell attack tool are circulating. Since the leak, 10% of organizations worldwide have been "impacted", meanin…
Microsoft assesses that the China-aligned actor Storm-0940 used the agentic AI penetration testing framework ARTEX to compromise the Microsoft 365 tenants of ConnectWise, then pivoted to its downstream customers. The campaign began in September 2026 and targeted hundreds of organizations worldwide across aerospace and defense, energy, fin…
Microsoft attributed the recent supply chain compromise of the ConnectWise Cloud Backup application to Storm-0940, a China state-aligned actor. The actor used ARTEX, a Go-based agentic AI penetration testing framework, to automate reconnaissance, password spraying and OAuth application abuse at "machine speed" against hundreds of organiza…