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Chinese Hacker Commands DeepSeek via Telegram to Launch Autonomous Attacks

July 31, 2026 · The Hacker News · Severity: HIGH

Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 reports a Chinese-speaking threat actor who used DeepSeek through the open-source Hermes Agent framework to launch autonomous attacks. After an initial Telegram instruction, the agent independently identified and exploited internet-facing systems, with no further operator input recovered.

Key Takeaways

  • Chinese-speaking actor used DeepSeek via Hermes Agent for autonomous attacks.
  • Agent found internet-facing systems and selected exploits without further input.
  • The actor is tracked under aliases knaithe and KnYuan.
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