Chinese Hacker Commands DeepSeek via Telegram to Launch Autonomous Attacks

Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 says a Chinese-speaking threat actor used DeepSeek through the open-source Hermes Agent framework to launch attacks autonomously.

After an initial Telegram instruction, the agent found internet-facing systems and selected public exploits. The researchers recovered no further operator input in the session.

The operator, tracked through the aliases knaithe and KnYuan,