AI agents drove much of the AI news this week, according to a recap of the latest episode of This Week in AI hosted by Vicki Reyzelman of Akamai. The episode covered security exploits, shopping and transaction tools, infrastructure constraints, and early research results.
On security, the report describes a supply chain attack involving ARTEX, an open source agentic AI penetration-testing framework. The attack helped attackers reach more than 2,250 Microsoft 365 tenants through a ConnectWise compromise. The incident raised concerns about OAuth authentication and conventional identity protections when autonomous agents interact with enterprise systems.
Separately, PHP2Shell refers to two vulnerabilities rated 9.2 on the CVSS severity scale. They could allow attackers to execute code on vulnerable web servers without authentication. CISA urged immediate patching following the October 21 disclosure. Researchers also documented attackers using AI agents to obtain password hashes and MFA secrets from a European government system within two hours.
The report says security teams need automated detection and response, tighter access controls, and network segmentation. It also says researchers from METR and Redwood Research identified weaknesses in an earlier version of OpenAI's