China-Aligned Hackers Use AI Agents to Reach Cloud Admin Access in Under 3 Hours

Microsoft says a China-state aligned actor it tracks as Storm-0940 has used an agentic AI penetration testing framework called ARTEX to automate attacks against hundreds of organisations worldwide, across a broad range of industries. The activity dates back to at least September 2026. In several cases the actor gained privileged access to an organisation's cloud infrastructure, and in multiple instances the time from first targeting to privileged access was under three hours. Microsoft assesses that Storm-0940 was also responsible for the recently disclosed ConnectWise supply chain compromise of a multi-tenant application.

Microsoft notes that AI agents are not limited the way human attackers are. They can work around the clock, on weekends and on holidays, and can try several breach paths at once. This shortens the time between choosing a target and reaching an objective, and raises the speed and impact of complex attacks such as supply chain compromises.

In affected Microsoft 365 environments, the actor abused a compromised application that had already been granted access, which let it authenticate without any interactive user sign-in. Microsoft then observed AI-accelerated follow-on activity through Microsoft Graph, including reconnaissance, changes to application credentials, and attempts to change privileges that could give wider or longer-lasting access. Microsoft states the activity did not result from a compromise of, or a vulnerability in, its own systems, products or services.