Microsoft Says Storm-0940 Used AI Agents in ConnectWise Campaign
Summary
Microsoft says China-aligned Storm-0940 used the ARTEX AI-agent framework to accelerate reconnaissance, password spraying and OAuth abuse in a campaign that included the ConnectWise cloud-backup compromise and attacks on customer Microsoft 365 tenants.
Key points
- Microsoft attributes the activity to Storm-0940 and says the group used the open-source ARTEX framework to automate offensive security workflows.
- Microsoft says Storm-0940 has used ARTEX since September to automate attacks against hundreds of targets globally, including South Korean financial institutions.
- Microsoft said ARTEX accelerated scanning, reconnaissance, password spraying and OAuth application abuse during the ConnectWise cloud-backup compromise and activity against downstream customers.
- Between Oct. 10 and Oct. 14, Microsoft observed password-spraying attempts against more than 300 accounts across eight organizations, producing over 150,000 failed logons and peaking at nearly 3,000 per minute. Microsoft said none succeeded during that campaign.
- Huntress said a threat actor accessed ConnectWise customers’ Microsoft 365 environments using a stolen API secret in the backup software; Microsoft described subsequent authentication using stolen application credentials.
- Microsoft said agents in some environments modified application credentials, identities, groups and privileged roles, changes that could help maintain access after the original compromised application is patched.
Article Details
- Event Type
- AI-assisted campaign involving the ConnectWise supply chain compromise and attacks on downstream cloud tenants.
- Impact
- Microsoft reported that Storm-0940 used ARTEX to accelerate reconnaissance, password spraying, and OAuth application abuse. Huntress said the actor gained access to ConnectWise customers' Microsoft 365 environments through a stolen API secret. Microsoft reported no successful attempts in its telemetry during the five-day password-spraying campaign, but noted evidence of follow-on activity and warned that changes to credentials, identities, groups, and privileged roles could maintain access and enable data exfiltration.
MITRE ATT&CK
Threat Actors
Vendors
ConnectWiseThe ConnectWise supply chain compromise disclosed last week was part of a broader campaign by a China-aligned threat actor that used agentic artificial intelligence to conduct penetration testing, researchers found.MicrosoftThe tool that carried out the attacks is an open-source framework called, Microsoft said Wednesday. Artex is a large language model system that can work with AI agents from any model and make them run offensive security
Products
Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprisetool is widely used by enterprise IT and managed service providers to backup and restore clients' Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace data.Microsoft Graphapplication credential modifications and changes to identities, groups and privileged roles in Microsoft Graph and directory operations.