{"id":139597,"date":"2026-08-14T02:56:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T02:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/139597\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T02:56:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T02:56:33","slug":"taiwan-says-ai-agents-used-in-cyberattacks-targeting-island-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/139597\/","title":{"rendered":"Taiwan says AI agents used in cyberattacks targeting island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overseas hackers used artificial intelligence agents to help carry out a wave of cyberattacks targeting Taiwanese government agencies in July, the island\u2019s digital affairs ministry said Thursday.<\/p>\n

\"TaiwanTaiwan\u2019s flag seen on the top of the presidential palace, Taipei, Taiwan. September 11, 2021. Photo: Walid Berrazeg\/HKFP.<\/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 \u201cgreyzone\u201d methods \u2014 tactics that fall short of an act of war \u2014 including cyberattacks to harass the island.<\/p>\n

The cyberattacks began in July and the \u201caffected agencies have successively completed the response measures\u201d, 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 \u201chybrid model\u201d that combined AI agents, such as the open-source AI agent platform OpenClaw, to assist in the attacks, the ministry said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI agents can rapidly chain together multiple attack techniques and use secondary systems \u2014 such as backup and testing systems \u2014 as jumping-off points, giving the attacks the characteristics of high speed, low cost, and large scale.\u201d<\/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

\"ArtificialArtificial intelligence. File photo: Tara Winstead, via Pexels. <\/p>\n

The digital affairs ministry\u2019s 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 \u201cnot a new thing\u201d, this was \u201cthe first time it has been revealed that multiple AI agents were used to carry out a cyberattack,\u201d 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

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Dateline:<\/p>\n

Taipei,\u00a0Taiwan<\/p>\n

Type of Story: News Service<\/p>\n

Produced externally by an organization we trust to adhere to high journalistic standards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Overseas hackers used artificial intelligence agents to help carry out a wave of cyberattacks targeting Taiwanese government agencies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5908,405,111,7537,387,390],"class_list":["post-139597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-agentic-ai","tag-afp","tag-ai-agents","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence-agents","tag-china","tag-taiwan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139597","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=139597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}