CrowdStrike Says a Second China-Nexus Group, VAPOR PANDA, Used ARTEX and DeepSeek Against More Than 200 Organizations in 11 Days
CrowdStrike says the China-nexus group it tracks as VAPOR PANDA used the ARTEX AI agent framework, mainly with DeepSeek, against more than 200 organizations in at least 14 countries starting October 17. It confirmed post-exploitation at nine. One operator ran several intrusions at once, stepping in only at decision points. CrowdStrike says this is separate from the Storm-0940 activity Microsoft reported.
Eight days after Microsoft tied the ARTEX framework to a China-aligned group it calls Storm-0940, CrowdStrike says a different China-nexus adversary, VAPOR PANDA, used it against more than 200 organizations over 11 days, running several intrusions at the same time. CrowdStrike says it had already seen ARTEX and similar agentic frameworks used by financially motivated and unattributed actors; what is new here, it says, is a targeted intrusion adversary using ARTEX to run parallel intrusions against high-value targets. CrowdStrike calls that an escalation from AI agents assisting single intrusions to one human operator directing many.
What CrowdStrike reported#
In a report published on October 29, CrowdStrike says that from October 17, 2026, a single ARTEX controller it links to VAPOR PANDA infrastructure was used against entities in at least 14 countries over an 11-day window. Targets included foreign ministries in Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East; semiconductor, defense and think tank organizations in the US; and telecommunications providers in several regions. One engagement targeted 19 US organizations in the pharmaceutical, semiconductor, defense, nuclear and financial sectors.
CrowdStrike says it confirmed post-exploitation activity at nine organizations, where the attackers deployed a backdoor called BLOODALCHEMY, and saw password-spraying against at least 12 more. NBC News, reporting on the findings, described the hackers as Chinese state-linked.
How the agents were run#
According to CrowdStrike, VAPOR PANDA ran ARTEX mainly with the DeepSeek model, plus a second, subscription-based commercial model it could not identify. In one intrusion, the planning agents consumed on the order of 1.4 billion input tokens. Recovered transcripts show an operator giving instructions in Chinese and intervening "only to steer the agents at decision points," while the agents pursued several approaches in parallel and switched when one failed. CrowdStrike also says the operator told the agents to look for machines without its own Falcon sensor installed.
CrowdStrike says this campaign is the group's first observed use of AI-driven intrusion tooling and a broadening of its usual targets, and that it is separate from the Storm-0940 activity Microsoft described. It assesses that China-nexus groups will "highly likely" keep adopting frameworks like ARTEX over the next 12 months. ARTEX was first traced in the Korean bank breaches earlier this month.
Limits#
- Attribution, target counts and token figures are CrowdStrike's own and are not independently verified; CrowdStrike sells the endpoint sensor the report mentions.
- CrowdStrike does not name the victim organizations or say what data, if any, was taken.
- We read only the opening of NBC News' report.
- CrowdStrike does not say whether DeepSeek or the second model provider knew how their models were being used.
Sources#
- CrowdStrike: VAPOR PANDA Uses AI-Driven ARTEX to Scale a Global Espionage Campaign (October 29, 2026)
- Microsoft Security Blog: AI-driven, large-scale nation-state campaign using ARTEX enables supply chain compromise (October 21, 2026)
- NBC News: Chinese hackers used DeepSeek and other AI tools in sweeping global cyberattacks, report finds (October 29, 2026)