AI agents attempted to hack US, Canadian gov't websites: report

Artificial intelligence (AI) agents have attempted to hack US and Canadian government websites, according to a report by the San Francisco-based nonprofit research lab Transluce.Released on Wednesday, the report said that researchers found "two rudimentary and failed hacking attempts, one against the US Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection, and one against Library and Archives Canada, a Canadian federal agency."The researchers said the failed attempts were linked to other activity in which agents "used an array of aggressive tactics short of hacking to probe US government websites, often using sites in unintended ways and sometimes violating explicit usage policies."The activity targeted websites of the White House, the Departments of War, Justice and Commerce, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Securities and Exchange Commission and state agencies in California, Maryland, Illinois, Texas and New York, the report said."We have so far identified no instances in these datasets where agents gained access to any information that is not publicly available," the researchers said.The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security said in a statement on Tuesday that it was aware of reports of suspected AI agent activity."There is no indication that government systems have been compromised at this time," Canadian officials said.