DeepSeek

China-Linked VAPOR PANDA Runs 200+ AI-Driven Intrusions via ARTEX

Global – October 31, 2026 -- The China-nexus adversary VAPOR PANDA used the agentic framework ARTEX to target more than 200 organizations worldwide, according to CrowdStrike OverWatch. The campaign paired the Chinese-developed DeepSeek large language model (LLM) with a second commercial LLM to run intrusions against multiple high-value targets in parallel. CrowdStrike calls it an escalation in China-nexus use of AI agents, from single intrusions to simultaneous engagements directed by one human operator.

Campaign reached at least 14 countries in 11 days

Exploitation activity began on October 17, 2026, from a single ARTEX controller linked to VAPOR PANDA infrastructure. Targets included foreign ministries in Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. U.S. semiconductor, defense and think tank organizations were also hit, along with telecommunications providers in multiple regions.

CrowdStrike Traces South Korean Bank Breaches to ARTEX, LLM Toolkit

South Korea – October 12, 2026 -- CrowdStrike Intelligence has linked a late-September to early-October 2026 campaign against South Korean financial organizations, which resulted in exfiltrated data, to attacker servers that exposed Claude Code session histories, ARTEX configuration files and Claude memory files.

The actor used ARTEX, a recently released open-source agentic penetration testing tool developed in China, alongside large language models (LLMs). CrowdStrike assesses with moderate confidence that the actor is a Chinese speaker and financially motivated, based on the tool choice and Chinese-language prompts. The activity has not been attributed to a named adversary.

Five AI Models Read Same Book, Then Critique Each Other's Analysis

Paris – September 21, 2026 -- A newly published book, "Dialogue Between a Thinker and AI," has become the test object for a comparative experiment feeding identical text to five major artificial intelligence systems: OpenAI/Astra, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Google Gemini and xAI/Grok. The French and English print editions are now available, but the project's core output is a public meta-reading exercise designed to expose how differently large language models interpret the same source material.

Five AI systems receive an identical corpus for independent analysis

Each model is given the full text of the book, generated originally through hundreds of hours of dialogue between a human thinker and AI. Researchers behind the project state the goal is not to rank the models but to document where their readings converge, diverge, or miss entirely.