AI-led espionage: Chinese group uses Claude Code to hack targets

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New reality: in cyber-attacks, AI runs the playbook and humans just sign off. Anthropic says it disrupted a highly sophisticated AI-led espionage campaign. According to them, a Chinese state-sponsored group hijacked Claude Code and used autonomous agents to infiltrate around 30 targets: large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturers, and government agencies. The workflow looks more like an automated factory than a classic hacker team: Phase 1: A human operator picks a target and passes it to the Claude Code operator. Phase 2: MCP servers call tools - scan, search, data-retrieval, code-analysis - to map the external surface. Findings are logged; a human reviews the summary. Phase 3: Claude directs iterative vulnerability scans and uses tools again. When something looks exploitable, agents attempt exploits and validate callbacks. A human checks results and decides what to do next. Phases 4 & 5: Internal recon kicks in: agents obtain credentials, access data, run exploitation tools again, and finally move into data exfiltration - with humans still in the role of reviewer/approver. All the heavy lifting - scanning, searching, analyzing, exploiting, pulling data - is orchestrated by AI agents. The person behind the screen mostly chooses the target and reviews the reports. We’re not just “using AI for hacking” anymore. This is AI-orchestrated espionage, end-to-end - and humans are starting to look like operators on top of the system, not the other way around.

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This really changes how we need to think about cybersecurity. AI agents can scale attacks way beyond what human teams could pull off. Defense playbook probably needs a full reboot again.

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