China-aligned Storm-0940 used ARTEX AI agents in ConnectWise Cloud Backup supply-chain attack on Microsoft 365 tenants
Microsoft attributed the recent supply-chain attack on ConnectWise customers' Microsoft 365 environments to Storm-0940, a China-state aligned actor active since 2021. Since at least September 2026 the group has used the open-source agentic AI penetration testing framework ARTEX to automate attacks against hundreds of organizations worldwide. After a failed password-spraying wave, it compromised ConnectWise Cloud Backup and used it to reach downstream customer tenants. Microsoft has not said how many customers were compromised and cautions that successful authentication does not necessarily mean data access or theft. ConnectWise shut down services on Saturday and began phased restoration on Wednesday, expecting recovery to take several days.
Detalhes técnicos
- Over the four days ending Oct. 14, Storm-0940 targeted 327 Microsoft 365 and Exchange Online accounts across eight organizations, with more than 151,000 failed logons, peaking at 2,900 failures per minute.
- The next day it turned to ConnectWise, using the same malicious infrastructure and AI agents against Cloud Backup customers' Microsoft 365 environments.
- ARTEX reached more than 2,250 tenants at about 2,900 sign-in attempts per minute.
- It accelerated scanning and password spraying and abused OAuth applications in downstream victims.
- In some environments the agents went beyond authentication to Microsoft Graph and directory operations: reconnaissance, application credential modifications for persistence, and changes to identities, groups and privileged roles.
- ARTEX is described as LLM-driven agents that run an autonomous penetration test from reconnaissance to exfiltration, and works with any AI model. Microsoft says multiple actors from various regions use it.
- Targeted sectors: aerospace and defense, automotive, chemicals, energy, financial services, government, legal, manufacturing, media, military, semiconductors, software, technology, think tanks and non-profits.
Remediação
- ConnectWise advised customers to keep their connections disabled while phased recovery continues.
- Review Microsoft 365 tenants for evidence of follow-on activity, especially unexpected changes to application credentials, groups and privileged roles, and audit high-privilege third-party OAuth applications.
Linha do tempo
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China-aligned Storm-0940 used ARTEX AI agents in ConnectWise Cloud Backup supply-chain attack on Microsoft 365 tenants
ler a análise desta fonte ocultar
Microsoft attributed the recent supply-chain attack on ConnectWise customers' Microsoft 365 environments to Storm-0940, a China-state aligned actor active since 2021. Since at least September 2026 the group has used the open-source agentic AI penetration testing framework ARTEX to automate attacks against hundreds of organizations worldwide. After a failed password-spraying wave, it compromised ConnectWise Cloud Backup and used it to reach downstream customer tenants. Microsoft has not said how many customers were compromised and cautions that successful authentication does not necessarily mean data access or theft. ConnectWise shut down services on Saturday and began phased restoration on Wednesday, expecting recovery to take several days.
Technical Details
- Over the four days ending Oct. 14, Storm-0940 targeted 327 Microsoft 365 and Exchange Online accounts across eight organizations, with more than 151,000 failed logons, peaking at 2,900 failures per minute.
- The next day it turned to ConnectWise, using the same malicious infrastructure and AI agents against Cloud Backup customers' Microsoft 365 environments.
- ARTEX reached more than 2,250 tenants at about 2,900 sign-in attempts per minute.
- It accelerated scanning and password spraying and abused OAuth applications in downstream victims.
- In some environments the agents went beyond authentication to Microsoft Graph and directory operations: reconnaissance, application credential modifications for persistence, and changes to identities, groups and privileged roles.
- ARTEX is described as LLM-driven agents that run an autonomous penetration test from reconnaissance to exfiltration, and works with any AI model. Microsoft says multiple actors from various regions use it.
- Targeted sectors: aerospace and defense, automotive, chemicals, energy, financial services, government, legal, manufacturing, media, military, semiconductors, software, technology, think tanks and non-profits.
Remediation
- ConnectWise advised customers to keep their connections disabled while phased recovery continues.
- Review Microsoft 365 tenants for evidence of follow-on activity, especially unexpected changes to application credentials, groups and privileged roles, and audit high-privilege third-party OAuth applications.