A threat actor is using autonomous AI agents in an ongoing campaign targeting hundreds of online retailers, cybersecurity outfit Gambit reports.
Active since July, the campaign relies on three AI harnesses to automate the attack chain, including vulnerability research, exploitation, and orchestration.
“Between 10 and 15 September alone, 105 attack projects were launched, and at least 27 companies were compromised to varying degrees,” Gambit says.
The hackers stole information from over 600,000 unexpired credit cards from two of the compromised companies and injected skimmer scripts into five online stores.
Additionally, they gained some access to a Fortune 500 hospitality company and to three US firms, including an airline, a private industrial supplies distributor, and an online fashion retailer.
“The campaign goes back further, and has impacted at least tens of other companies since July 2026. Where access was achieved, it usually took less than a day, and in many cases just a few hours,” Gambit notes.
Open source AI tools for automation
Mounted by a Chinese-speaking, financially motivated threat actor, the campaign used the open source AI penetration testing tool Strix for vulnerability hunting. Between August 23 and 31, the attackers ran it 146 times in ‘deep mode’ against 138 hosts, through OpenRouter on GLM 5.2 and on DeepSeek v4 Pro.
The generated reports were then handed to the autonomous penetration testing engine Cairn, which was used to launch 105 attack projects between September 10 and 15 on DeepSeek v4.1 Flash. Gambit retrieved 48 of the attack reports, as the others were deleted.
“Each attack path was chosen by the harness in real time through extensive probing and exploitation attempts, resulting in dynamic and mostly different TTPs across victims,” Gambit notes.