By Microsoft Security Research, Microsoft Threat Intelligence
Publication Date: 2026-10-21 18:23:00
As early as September 2026, Storm-0940, a China-state aligned actor, used the agentic AI penetration testing framework ARTEX to automate attacks targeting hundreds of organizations globally across a broad range of industries. Several of these Storm-0940 ARTEX-driven attacks have resulted in the actor obtaining privileged access to an organization’s cloud infrastructure – including multiple instances where the time from initial targeting to privileged access was less than 3 hours. Microsoft assesses that Storm-0940 was responsible for the recently disclosed ConnectWise supply chain compromise of a multi-tenant application.
This activity demonstrates how threat actors are integrating agentic AI into existing offensive security workflows and allows them to scale their operations exponentially. Agents are not constrained by factors affecting humans – they can work around the clock, on weekends, and on holidays and attempt…
