Chinese State Hackers Double Attack Volume After Adopting AI, Report Shows
Chinese state-affiliated hackers now run twice as many attacks as they did before handing mundane work to DeepSeek and open-source artificial intelligence (AI) systems, according to Taiwanese threat intelligence firm TeamT5.
Attribution remains imprecise. The firm cannot tie every intrusion to a specific system, though it said that DeepSeek remains a popular choice among hackers.
Why Cheap AI Beats Frontier Models for Attackers
The finding inverts a common assumption that the risk of offensive AI lies mainly with the most advanced systems. Instead, operators are now scaling output using relatively weaker tools.
Cost and permissiveness drive that choice. Moonshot's Kimi K3 is more powerful. Yet, TeamT5 has logged no incidents involving it and considers its running costs prohibitive for hackers.
Charles Li, chief analyst at TeamT5, framed the trade-off directly.
"DeepSeek is the AI of choice for Chinese hackers because it's relatively powerful with very low cyber guardrails. Western models are highly sought-after but their guardrails are much more strict and require a lot more effort to bypass," Li said.
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