Hackers Deploy AntiFox AI Agents on Alibaba Cloud to Steal AWS Credentials
Attackers are hosting self-managed instances of the open-source AntiFox agentic penetration testing platform on Alibaba Cloud to target web services and AWS environments. The infrastructure has been linked to vulnerability exploitation, webshell deployment, credential validation, configuration discovery, and AWS secret harvesting. Originally forked from ARTEX 0.1.1, AntiFox features a Chinese-language interface and allows users to deploy AI agents that automate mapping of exposed services and probing endpoints for vulnerabilities. Arctic Wolf researchers observed malicious activity where valid AWS IAM users and assumed EC2 roles were used to make hundreds of authenticated API requests, resulting in the theft of production secrets in some cases. Separate incidents involved reading, copying, and deleting S3 objects using compromised identities. The findings connect AntiFox to prior ARTEX-linked campaigns, including those attributed to the Chinese group Vapor Panda targeting over 200 organizations. AntiFox remains publicly available on GitHub with version 2.0 updates, despite publisher warnings against illegal use.
BleepingComputerNov 11, 2026Translated from English