Chinese hackers breached ConnectWise and spied on thousands of companies

Chinese hackers spied on thousands of companies after breaching IT giant ConnectWise

Hackers linked to the Chinese government breached ConnectWise's cloud backup service, stole application credentials and used them to reach customers' Microsoft-hosted environments, email and other files. Microsoft says the group used an open-source AI framework, ARTEX, to make nearly 3,000 login attempts per minute against about 2,250 organizations, leaving defenders little time to detect and respond. ConnectWise has suspended access to the cloud backup system and is investigating; service restoration was still under way as of Thursday.

Why it matters: Microsoft says hackers used an AI agent to try nearly 3,000 logins a minute, squeezing the time defenders have to detect and respond.