Hundreds of copies of Chinese-made ARTEX hacking tools leaked online for anyone to use in further attacks
- Researchers found over 1,400 exposed ARTEX instances online, with many linked to offensive security tooling
- ARTEX combines AI agents with reconnaissance capabilities and has been increasingly adopted in real-world attacks
- Some operators accidentally exposed malware, exploits, credentials, and internal infrastructure through misconfigured servers
Around 1,500 malicious instances of ARTEX were found on the internet, available to anyone who knew where to look, experts have warned.
Security researchers Censys said they identified 1,465 hosts running exposed ARTEX consoles. Of those, 155 (roughly 10%) were also running at least one tool commonly used in cyberattacks, including Cobalt Strike, Vshell, or Adaptix C2. They also found 32 publicly accessible directories on ARTEX hosts, some of which exposed exploit binaries, post-exploitation tools, and other sensitive files.
Usually, the ARTEX console does not require public-facing access, the researchers said, stressing that overall global deployment is “likely higher”.
Hijacking ARTEX
ARTEX is a legitimate penetration testing...
Copyright of this story solely belongs to www.techradar.com. To see the full text click HERE
