AI Agents Hit 1,200+ Sites: What to Check on Yours

An attacker used AI agents with little human help to try to break into online stores and payment sites, according to a report by security firm NorForge published on October 19. Reuters reported that the agents targeted more than 1,200 sites and reached websites of over 100 companies. Unpatched stores and old custom code are the main exposure.

What we know

How it surfaced: NorForge used the device search engines Shodan and Censys to find more than 20 open control panels for Cairn that it judges likely malicious. Cairn is an open-source tool that splits a goal among several AI agents, which investigate, test and log what they find.
The main cluster: the group NorForge calls AIA0001, Chinese-speaking, ran 14 panels and more than 1,100 attack projects against e-commerce and payment infrastructure, mainly in the US, Japan and Australia.
What they went after: according to NorForge, the agents prioritized login forms open to SQL injection, endpoints that require no authentication, file-upload forms and authentication bypasses. Their tooling included a Magento test lab and a proof of concept for a critical Magento flaw (CVE-2026-75650).
Hit rate: NorForge puts the average success rate at around 10%. Projects that reached their goal took a little under 23 hours on average.
Cost: NorForge estimates about $5 per task, failed ones included, and warns the uncertainty is considerable.
Which model: the cluster's worker was named "claudecode_deepseek-v4.1-flash". NorForge thinks this may point to Claude Code driving a DeepSeek model; it is not confirmed.
Leaked secrets: the open panels held hundreds of keys and passwords; NorForge found 11% still valid.
An earlier case: in September, Gambit Security described another AI-agent campaign against online retailers: at least 27 companies compromised and more than 600,000 card records taken from two of them. No source links the two operations.

What changes and what doesn't

The price of an attack changes. Using NorForge's figures, about $5 per attempt and a 10% success rate, each successful break-in costs roughly $50 (this article's math). That makes small shops worth attacking, and agents can keep probing for hours without tiring.

The weaknesses don't change. They are the usual ones: unpatched software, unprotected forms, legacy code and forgotten keys. How much data was taken and the full victim list are unknown: NorForge does not name victims and is notifying them together with Reuters. And it is a snapshot: models and tools move fast.

How to tell if you're exposed

Update your store today. Platform, plugins or extensions, theme and PHP version. If you run Magento or Adobe Commerce, make sure Adobe's October security patches are installed. On shared hosting, ask your provider which PHP version your site runs.
Look for files you didn't add. A typical intrusion plants a file used to upload more files. Check public folders, especially image and upload folders, for recent code files you don't recognize, or ask your host for a malware scan.
Lock down access. Turn on two-step verification for the admin panel, limit login attempts and remove upload forms you don't use.
Rotate your keys. If API, payment or database keys ever sat in your code, a repository or a reachable dashboard, change them. A leaked key keeps working until it is revoked.
If you run AI agents or automations, put their dashboards behind a login. NorForge also found open panels from legitimate penetration-testing firms, with client data in plain view.

Sources

Updates: if NorForge or the affected companies publish the victim list or what data was taken, it will be added here with a link.