China APT Uses AI Pentest Tool Artex in ConnectWise Attacks

Microsoft says a China-linked APT is using the open source AI pentest tool Artex to industrialize attacks against ConnectWise customers, enabling machine-speed reconnaissance, password spraying, OAuth abuse, and persistence across hundreds of organizations. For CIOs and technology leaders, this underscores how adversaries are now using AI to scale identity- and SaaS-focused compromise faster than manual defenses can respond, increasing third-party risk and the likelihood of cross-tenant exposure in managed service and cloud environments. IT organizations should expect higher-volume, more adaptive attack campaigns and prioritize visibility into service principal activity, Microsoft Graph changes, and vendor/application trust relationships.