Two multi-stage network intrusion campaigns are actively targeting organizations in Latin America, specifically in Mexico, Ecuador, and Brazil. The Mexican campaign targets transportation and government entities using living-off-the-land techniques and self-hosted NextChat instances. The Brazilian campaign targets financial organizations with custom remote access trojans (RATs) and tunneling tools, including a Go-based SOCKS5 proxy. Both campaigns leverage AI tools such as Claude and GPT-4.1 to generate scripts and troubleshoot operations. Operational security failures by attackers, including exposed staging directories and unsecured interfaces, have allowed defenders visibility into their activities. Indicators include multiple duckdns.org domains, an IP address, and various file hashes. There are no known exploits in the wild or confirmed active threat actors at this time.
Two distinct threat campaigns, SHADOW-AETHER-040 and SHADOW-AETHER-064, have been identified targeting government entities and financial organizations across Latin America using agentic artificial intelligence to conduct cyber intrusions. SHADOW-AETHER-040, a Spanish-speaking group, compromised six government entities in Mexico between December 2025 and January 2026, while SHADOW-AETHER-064, operating in Portuguese, targeted Brazilian financial institutions starting in April 2026. Both campaigns established SOCKS5 tunnels via ProxyChains and SSH, enabling AI agents to execute commands directly within victim networks. The AI agents dynamically generated hacking tools and scripts on-demand, reducing detection by signature-based security solutions. Despite tactical similarities including shared toolsets like Chisel, Neo-reGeorg, CrackMapExec, and Impacket, the campaigns appear to be separate entities distinguished primarily by language. These operations represent emerging cases of AI agents executing complete...
