---
title: 'One hacker used AI agents to break into more than 100 company websites, Reuters reports'
url: 'https://securteksecurity.com/news/hacker-used-ai-agents-cairn-break-into-100-company-websites-reuters'
markdown: 'https://securteksecurity.com/news/hacker-used-ai-agents-cairn-break-into-100-company-websites-reuters.md'
date: '2026-10-19'
description: 'A Chinese-speaking hacker outsourced most of the work of a hacking campaign to autonomous AI agents, which broke into websites belonging to more than 100 companies, according to Reuters reporting published October 19, 2026. NorForge principal threat researcher Snorre Fagerland said he found the cam…'
taxonomy:
  category:
    - Cybersecurity
---

# [One hacker used AI agents to break into more than 100 company websites, Reuters reports](https://securteksecurity.com/news/hacker-used-ai-agents-cairn-break-into-100-company-websites-reuters)

   19th Oct 2026  

A Chinese-speaking hacker outsourced most of the work of a hacking campaign to autonomous AI agents, which broke into websites belonging to more than 100 companies, according to Reuters reporting published October 19, 2026. NorForge principal threat researcher Snorre Fagerland said he found the campaign while scanning for inadvertently exposed instances of Cairn, an open source AI problem solving platform, beginning around October 2. Beginning September 25, the hacker's agents attempted to break into more than 1,200 e-commerce websites in the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan, with successful intrusions typically taking about 23 hours and an estimated $50 in AI tokens each, about $5,000 in total, using a mixture of DeepSeek and Anthropic's Claude Code. Reuters independently reviewed the hacker's Cairn activity and identified Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins among the victims; Deere told Reuters it had taken remediation actions and had no indication sensitive information was accessed, SharkNinja said a standalone product support site was hit and contained, and Cummins said it was investigating a report involving a third party vendor website. Reuters could not ascertain how much data, if any, was extracted.

Sourcing limitation, stated openly: this item rests on a single reporting chain, Reuters reporting of NorForge research provided to Reuters ahead of publication, together with Reuters' own review of the Cairn activity and the victim responses Reuters obtained. No independent second outlet has verified the campaign; other coverage found is Reuters syndication or summaries of the Reuters report. The scale of any data extraction is unknown. This item will be updated when independent confirmation or denial appears.

Sources: [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/how-one-hacker-used-ai-agents-few-thousand-dollars-break-into-scores-sites-2026-10-19/)

---

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