Chinese hackers deploy open-source AI agents to automate espionage against Taiwan and Thailand
Chinese-speaking threat actors are now deploying open-source AI agents to automate espionage-grade hacking against government targets across Asia, according to coordinated disclosures from Hunt.io, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, and the Financial Times. The campaign, active since at least June 2026, centers on Hermes, an open-source autonomous agent framework that crossed 140,000 GitHub stars by July. Operators run Hermes in "YOLO mode," a configuration that removes human approval prompts and lets
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