Chinese Hackers Are Using Chinese AI Tools Now

This morning my wife discovered that someone had hacked one of her airline accounts and used all her miles to buy a flight on a Middle Eastern airline. The person who bought the stolen ticket had a Chinese name.

My immediate thought was that AI was almost certainly involved in this hack. Reports suggest the security of Chinese AI models isn't hard to bypass.

While open-source models can be made secure when built with strong safety guardrails, DeepSeek’s design allows users to alter not only its functionalities but also its safety mechanisms, creating a far greater risk of exploitation. The absence of robust safeguards leaves the model exposed and makes it particularly vulnerable to jailbreaking, where attackers can bypass what little safety infrastructure exists to force the model to generate harmful content. This vulnerability was highlighted in a recent Cisco study, which found that DeepSeek failed to block a single harmful prompt in its security assessments, including prompts related to cybercrime and misinformation. In comparison, OpenAI’s GPT-4o blocked 86 percent of harmful prompts, while Google’s Gemini blocked 64 percent. Further research indicates that DeepSeek is 11 times more likely to be exploited by cybercriminals than other AI models, highlighting a critical vulnerability in its design.

China has created a great new tool for cyber crime and as of this morning my family is on the wrong end of it. That's probably why this story about Chinese hackers using AI grabbed my attention this morning.

Chinese state-linked hackers used artificial intelligence, including the popular DeepSeek model, to launch cyberattacks against more than 200 organizations around the world in just 11 days, according to the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, in a campaign that illustrates how AI is allowing hackers to operate on a scale that previously required far more human effort.

The hackers targeted government agencies, telecommunications providers and companies in pharmaceuticals, defense and other industries, compromising at least nine organizations, CrowdStrike said. The campaign relied heavily on ARTEX, an AI-powered cybersecurity testing tool, and the Chinese AI model DeepSeek to automate hacking tasks that would otherwise require extensive human involvement. Another unnamed subscription-based AI model was used in addition to DeepSeek, according to CrowdStrike...

“This is the first time we’ve seen them using an AI or agentic capability at scale,” Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike’s vice president of threat intelligence, told NBC News. “This is a trend that’s going to continue, I think, and one where other threat actors will likely get in on the action.”

In short, Chinese hackers are just getting warmed up. Expect them to get better at this as the tools get better. And expect China to do nothing about it because sowing chaos in America and abroad is part of their game plan. They will crack down on the hacking of Americans and American infrastructure the same way they cracked down on selling fentanyl precursors to Mexican drug gangs, which is to say not at all.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to an email requesting comment. China generally denies accusations of hacking...

CrowdStrike declined to name the affected organizations, but its report on the campaign said at least nine have been significantly compromised: two U.S. pharmaceutical companies, a Middle Eastern interior ministry, two Latin American foreign ministries, a Greek government entity and telecommunication companies in the U.S., Belgium and the Philippines.

These targets suggest the latest hacks were about spying more than stealing. But the same tools are being used for theft as well. This report is from last week:

Over the past couple of weeks, a cybersecurity researcher watched as a Chinese-speaking hacker broke into websites belonging to more than 100 companies, including farm equipment maker Deere, home appliance company SharkNinja, and engine manufacturer Cummins.

Yet the hacker did almost none of the work.

The cybercriminal instead outsourced the hacking spree almost entirely to artificial intelligence, tasking AI agents ‌with spending hours autonomously probing and breaking into targeted sites, according to Snorre Fagerland, principal threat researcher at the cybersecurity company NorForge.

At a time of rising anxiety over the power of autonomous AI tools, Fagerland said ⁠his find was real-life evidence that commercially available AI agents could pull off complex intrusions from start to finish without human intervention, a dramatic boost to the power of a single malicious actor.

"It's a new world now," said Fagerland.

It's a new world now and it's going to be Americans who have the most to lose. Honestly, I wonder how long it's going to be before Chinese hackers start draining American bank accounts. Probably as soon as the LLM models they routinely steal from American tech companies are good enough to do it.

Editor’s Note: The American people overwhelmingly support President Trump’s law and order agenda.

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