Chinese group "Vapor Panda" uses AI tool ARTEX against more than 200 organizations worldwide
CrowdStrike attributed to a China-based state group it tracks as Vapor Panda, also known as VexatiousTemper and linked to the Earth Estries cluster, a campaign that since October 17 has used ARTEX, the autonomous AI penetration-testing tool already linked to attacks on South Korean banks and on ConnectWise, against more than 200 distinct organizations worldwide, including foreign ministries in Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, as well as semiconductor, defense and telecommunications firms in the US. CrowdStrike notes that "agentic tooling like ARTEX enables this scale of expansion at speed" for a small team, without marking a wholesale shift in the group's strategy. The case shows the same AI pentesting tool is now being used in parallel by at least two separate Chinese groups, a sign that such tools spread far faster than the defenses built against them.
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