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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOverseas hackers used AI agents to help carry out a wave of cyberattacks targeting Taiwanese government agencies in July, the island’s digital affairs ministry said\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
TAIPEI – Overseas hackers used artificial intelligence agents to help carry out a wave of cyberattacks targeting Taiwanese government agencies in July, the island’s digital affairs ministry said Thursday.<\/p>\n
Taiwan has previously blamed Chinese hackers for carrying out most of the millions of cyberattacks affecting the island democracy on a daily basis, but did not identify a particular country in this latest incident.<\/p>\n
China claims Taiwan is part of its territory and has intensified military, political and diplomatic pressure on the island in recent years.<\/p>\n
Taipei also accuses Beijing of using a range of “greyzone” methods — tactics that fall short of an act of war — including cyberattacks to harass the island.<\/p>\n
The cyberattacks began in July and the “affected agencies have successively completed the response measures”, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said in a statement, without providing further details on the scale, damage or targets of the attacks.<\/p>\n
Hackers used a “hybrid model” that combined AI agents, such as the open-source AI agent platform OpenClaw, to assist in the attacks, the ministry said.<\/p>\n
“AI agents can rapidly chain together multiple attack techniques and use secondary systems — such as backup and testing systems — as jumping-off points, giving the attacks the characteristics of high speed, low cost, and large scale.”<\/p>\n
Chinese tech giants seeking to take advantage of the interest in OpenClaw have been offering simplified installation and affordable coding plans to help users host its agents on cloud servers.<\/p>\n
The digital affairs ministry’s statement was in response to a Financial Times article this week that identified Taiwan as the target of an autonomous AI attack by suspected Chinese hackers.<\/p>\n
The FT, citing researchers at Israeli AI company Dream, said hackers had used open-source AI agents to build an autonomous tool to carry out the attack.<\/p>\n
The tool deployed up to eight autonomous agents that mapped 21 government systems, explored vulnerabilities and changed tactics when blocked, the FT said, describing the attack as a first of its kind.<\/p>\n
While AI cyberattacks are “not a new thing”, this was “the first time it has been revealed that multiple AI agents were used to carry out a cyberattack,” said Kenny Huang, chairman of Taiwan Network Information Center, an internet services company.<\/p>\n
Several countries, notably the United States, have voiced alarm in recent years at what they say is hacking activity backed by Beijing targeting their governments, militaries and businesses.<\/p>\n
China has denied the allegations, previously insisting it opposes and cracks down on all forms of cyberattacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Overseas hackers used AI agents to help carry out a wave of cyberattacks targeting Taiwanese government agencies in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[405,7537,66651,1930,68385,1777,576,68424,68425],"class_list":["post-138522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-agentic-ai","tag-ai-agents","tag-artificial-intelligence-agents","tag-autonomous-cyberattacks","tag-cybersecurity-threats","tag-digital-affairs-ministry","tag-network-security","tag-openclaw","tag-taiwan-cyberattacks","tag-taiwan-technology-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}