DFSCoerce

Aurora Ransomware Affiliate Uses AI Assistant Cursor to Compromise Active Directory and VMware ESXi Servers

An affiliate of the Aurora ransomware group employed the AI-powered coding assistant Cursor to plan and execute targeted attacks against corporate environments, focusing on Active Directory and VMware ESXi servers. The campaign impacted more than 20 organizations between April and July 2026. The operator used Cursor to generate commands, refine exploitation techniques, and build attack sequences aimed at Windows infrastructure, particularly Active Directory Certificate Services (ADCS). Techniques included noPac exploitation combined with NTLM relay attacks leveraging PetitPotam, PrinterBug, and DFSCoerce to escalate privileges up to domain administrator level. After gaining access, the attackers collected and compressed large volumes of data for exfiltration before deploying the Aurora ransomware on Windows, Linux, and ESXi systems. The ESXi variant stops virtual machines prior to encryption to maximize impact on virtualized environments.