Hackers use AntiFox AI agents in AWS credential-theft attacks

Attackers are using Alibaba Cloud to host self-managed instances of AntiFox, an open-source agentic penetration testing platform, to target web services and AWS environments.

The infrastructure hosting AntiFox was used for various malicious activities, including vulnerability exploitation, webshell deployment, credential validation, configuration discovery, and AWS secret harvesting.

Initially created as a fork of ARTEX 0.1.1, AntiFox has a Chinese-language interface and lets users deploy AI agents and automate common penetration-testing tasks, such as mapping exposed services and probing target endpoints for vulnerabilities.

Security researchers at Arctic Wolf observed malicious AntiFox-linked infrastructure hosted on Alibaba Cloud using valid AWS identities, including IAM users and, in some cases, assumed EC2 roles, to make authenticated requests to Amazon Web Services APIs.