Hundreds of Artex AI Hacking Tools Found Exposed Online

A popular AI hacking tool has been left wide open on the internet. Security firm Censys found more than 800 separate deployments of Artex reachable online without a password, TechCrunch reports, giving outsiders a window into software designed to probe systems for weaknesses automatically. That is a serious concern for defenders everywhere.

Artex is free, open-source software that was first released in July, and it has already been linked to several attacks. CrowdStrike tied a September attack on South Korea's financial sector to a Chinese-speaking hacker using it, and Microsoft said it was used in an October breach of IT provider ConnectWise.

Artex's developers say the project will go closed-source and paid-only, but dozens of copies of the code remain on code-sharing sites. That means the tool is likely to stay in circulation, and security teams will need to keep on watching for it even after the original authors lock it down.