Cognition’s chief information security officer Alex Stamos says the cybersecurity industry is in a ‘dark age’ because of AI-enabled attacks. He notes that nation-state groups and small hacker collectives are using open-weight models to automate the detection of vulnerabilities and the creation of exploits in real-time. This shift is fundamentally changing how security threats are identified and weaponized.
A Chinese open-source tool named ARTEX, powered by the ‘obliterated GLM-5.3’ model, automates the cyber kill chain. Adversaries using this tool have breached three South Korean banks and over 200 additional companies in a single week. The tool’s ability to automate the entire attack lifecycle makes it a powerful asset for cybercriminals.
The Fireworks hack allowed attackers to steal API keys, which were then used to compromise the Cursor IDE. This breach led to a malicious plugin being pushed to 5,000 companies, creating a risk of widespread data exposure. Security teams must now defend against automated attack chains that can move from cloud infrastructure directly into developer environments.
