Low-confidence report · Case No. FB-2026-09-25-deepseek-cairn-ecommerce-intrusions
A Chinese-speaking hacker set AI agents on more than 1,200 websites through the open-source Cairn platform, apparently on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, and they broke into more than 100 companies' sites, mostly online shops, and planted uploader shells.
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Leaderboard / Case No. FB-2026-09-25-deepseek-cairn-ecommerce-intrusions
A Chinese-speaking hacker set AI agents on more than 1,200 websites through the open-source Cairn platform, apparently on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, and they broke into more than 100 companies' sites, mostly online shops, and planted uploader shells.
Score breakdown
| Component | Value | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Sentence-Years | 10 | 18 USC 1030(a)(5)(A). Planting uploader shells on more than 100 companies' web servers is intentional damage to the integrity of protected computers under 18 USC 1030(a)(5)(A); damage to 10 or more protected computers in a year supports the ten-year maximum under 1030(c)(4)(B). 1030(a)(2)(C) is left out because Reuters "could not determine" how much data, if any, was taken. |
| × Contribution | 2 | Ran the operation: NorForge's Snorre Fagerland told Reuters the hacker "did almost none of the work", giving instructions of under 100 Chinese characters to agents that spent hours probing and breaking into sites unsupervised; NorForge says the agents did the reconnaissance, testing and exploitation. |
| × Blast Radius | 1 | Third party: The victims are private companies, mostly e-commerce sites; Reuters names Deere, SharkNinja and a website run by a Cummins vendor. No government system is reported. |
| × Legal status | 1 | Crime. |
| + Tradecraft | 3 | NorForge says AIA0001's goal was persistent access and its pipeline had agents plant an "uploader shell" on breached shops, and it confirmed a live uploader shell on a hardware parts vendor's site (persistence). Single exploits are described but none is shown to be a zero-day, and credential use isn't attributed to this cluster specifically. |
| + Guardrails | 0 | Guardrails intact: Neither Reuters nor NorForge reports a jailbreak or a modified model. NorForge notes the setup looked repurposed from an earlier CTF configuration, but doesn't say the model was misled, so guardrails are scored intact. |
| + Dwell Time | 11 | Reuters says the campaign began on 25 September 2026 and that Fagerland found malicious Cairn instances starting around 2 October, so 7 days, detected by a third party (NorForge). |
| Total | 34 |
Charges the human could face
18 USC 1030(a)(5)(A)Up to 10 yearsAct on the Prohibition of Unauthorized Computer Access (Act No. 128 of 1999)JapanCriminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) s 478.1 (unauthorised access to, or modification of, restricted data)AustraliaCriminal Code s 342.1 (unauthorized use of computer)Canada