DeepSeek and Hermes: An Autonomous Attack Platform for Reconnaissance, PoC Acquisition, and Target Selection

DeepSeek and Hermes: An Autonomous Attack Platform for Reconnaissance, PoC Acquisition, and Target Selection 1. Basic Information Article Title : Chinese-Speaking Threat Actor Harnesses AI Models for Autonomous Cyberattacks Publisher : Unit 42 Publication Date : 2026-07-30 Severity : High Original Source : https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/autonomous-ai-cyber-attack-campaign/ Related Malware : Hermes Agent, FofaMap MCP, Nuclei Threat Group : knaithe / KnYuan (Chinese-speaking threat actor) CVEs : CVE-2026-33017, CVE-2026-21858, CVE-2025-68613, CVE-2026-3055, CVE-2026-39987, CVE-2026-34486, CVE-2026-33824 Products & Environments : Langflow, n8n, Citrix NetScaler, Marimo, Apache Tomcat, Windows IKE Related Sources BleepingComputer Coverage 2. Executive Summary Given a single goal via Telegram, the Hermes/DeepSeek combination autonomously executed FOFA enumeration, PoC acquisition, success condition evaluation, and even switched to a different product after a failure. 3. Attack Flow Autonomous Langflow to n8n Pivot The operator gave an initial task to Hermes via Telegram. DeepSeek enumerated 84 Langflow instances on FOFA and downloaded the CVE-2026-33017 PoC from GitHub. It identified one instance as a vulnerable version, but the attack failed because it lacked auto_login or a public flow ID. It compared the public exposure scale of 10 product groups with GitHub PoC star counts and CVSS scores, then autonomously pivoted to n8n. It analyzed the chain of CVE-2026-21858 (file read) and CVE-2025-68613 (RCE). It found 3 vulnerable versions, but the attack failed because the unauthenticated file-upload form was missing. Parallel Manual Campaign The attacker enumerated public devices using FOFA and a custom scanner. They read NetScaler memory for 3 organizations using CVE-2026-3055 and searched for the NSC_AAAC cookie. They confirmed command execution on 11 Marimo notebooks using CVE-2026-39987. They attempted reverse shells against Tomcat and IKE VPN. 4. Attacker Infrastru