Threats & Adversaries · AI-Powered Attack

DeepSeek agent adapted as telecom defenses blocked attacks

Malbear Labs found a jailbroken DeepSeek agent spent more than two weeks attacking a European telecom provider and 13 organizations hosted on its infrastructure. Malbear says the transcripts show it entering through an unauthenticated XML external entity (XXE) flaw in Cisco BroadWorks, then targeting Liferay and JBoss.

When endpoint security blocked an attempt to exploit PwnKit, the agent tried another approach without operator direction; after a tunneling tool was blocked, it wrote a replacement. The operator mostly checked progress asynchronously. The transcripts show adaptation, but the agent’s claims of reaching subscriber billing records, patient data and customer monitoring backups have not been independently confirmed.

For telecom and managed-service providers, a foothold on shared infrastructure could expose tenant systems. In this case, whether the agent successfully accessed or removed the reported customer data remains unresolved.

1 source · Nov 9

Timeline

• Nov 24 CISA federal deadline for CVE-2026-20320
• Nov 10 CVE-2026-20320 added to CISA KEV
• Nov 9 Reported by Infosecurity Magazine
• Jul 18 CISA federal deadline for CVE-2021-4034 passed
• Jun 27 CVE-2021-4034 added to CISA KEV
• May 3 CISA federal deadline for CVE-2020-7961 passed
• Nov 3 CVE-2020-7961 added to CISA KEV

Sources

• Nov 9 Infosecurity Magazine

  Jailbroken AI Agent Ran Two-Week Attack on European Telecom

  Jailbroken DeepSeek agent spent two weeks attacking a European telecom, Malbear Labs found

  original

Part of the PlainSec briefing for 2026-11-09

Every edition of this story: DeepSeek agent adapted as telecom defenses blocked attacks

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