Ai-driven Cyberattack Last Month, the Ministry of Digital Affairs Said Yesterday, Following a Financial Times Report on the Incident

The Administration for Cyber Security said its monitoring unit detected the attacks last month, and the National Institute for Cyber Security began issuing alerts on July 20. An investigation was launched immediately, and the, and scope of the attacks have been determined, while affected agencies have completed their responses. The ministry did not disclose where the attacks originated. According to the Financial Times report published on Wednesday, researchers at Israeli AI start-up Dream were the first to detect the intrusion, which allegedly used open-source AI agents to build an autonomous hacking tool.

The report cited a source familiar with the matter as saying that Taiwan was the target. The tool compromised at least 85 government user accounts and extracted more than 2,500 personnel records before attackers expanded operations to Taiwan's nuclear safety agency and at least seven energy companies, the UK-based outlet reported. Dream did not attribute the attack to a specific group, but researchers said internal communications linked to the operation were in simplified Chinese, suggesting operators were likely connected to China.

Meanwhile, Taiwan's cyber agency said the attacks showed clear signs of originating overseas and involved a hybrid approach combining conventional hacking with AI agents such as OpenClaw. AI agents can rapidly combine multiple attack techniques and use secondary systems as stepping stones, making attacks faster, cheaper and more scalable, it said.