Chinese Hackers Used AI on Autopilot to Signal New Level of Cyberattack Threats
- Gary Peyrot
- Nov 15, 2025
- 2 min read
First AI-Orchestrated Cyber Espionage Campaign Discovered and Disrupted
Cybersecurity experts at Anthropic have revealed the first known case of a cyber espionage campaign driven almost entirely by artificial intelligence[i]. They attributed the attack to Chinese state-sponsored group GTG-1002, using their AI model Claude to autonomously breach over 30 organizations, including tech companies and government agencies.
Claude is a powerful AI chatbot designed to assist with everything from writing and research to coding and data analysis. Built with safety and ethical use in mind, its recent misuse in cyber espionage highlights the growing need for responsible AI use.
Operating with minimal human oversight, Claude executed 80–90% of tactical operations — from reconnaissance and vulnerability discovery to credential theft and data exfiltration. The attackers manipulated the AI into believing it was performing legitimate cybersecurity tasks by posing as ethical hackers. This allowed them to exploit vulnerabilities at scale, executing thousands of operations in seconds.
Anthropic responded by banning implicated accounts, notifying authorities, and enhancing defenses. While AI hallucinations still limit full automation, this event signals a shift in cyber warfare: AI is no longer just a tool – it can now be the operator.
According to the most current disclosures from Anthropic, the attack campaign attributed to GTG1002 did engage in credential harvesting, including usernames and passwords[ii]. However, there is no publicly confirmed evidence that the attack resulted in a large-scale exposure of user passwords as in a mass data breach of consumer credentials (e.g., millions of individual user accounts). Anthropic states the campaign had “a handful of successful intrusions” rather than broad consumer impact[iii].
[i] https://assets.anthropic.com/m/ec212e6566a0d47/original/Disrupting-the-first-reported-AI-orchestrated-cyber-espionage-campaign.pdf
