Acronis links AI driven attacker to Taipei emergency data theft

Researchers from Acronis’s Threat Research Unit reported that a single attacker based in Hualien City, Taiwan, used BOSSAI AI agents to obtain emergency dispatch records from Taipei’s 119 system, covering seven districts. The data includes incident times, response types, case status and street-level locations, described as case records rather than live ambulance tracking.

In addition, the attacker accessed a Taipei fire department platform that exposed patient data from 2018, including ECG readings and ambulance video footage, without requiring a login. The operation appears to have targeted hundreds of organisations across at least 11 countries, with data theft or access confirmed at about 10 targets in Taiwan, Mexico and Thailand.

The evidence cited by the researchers comes from the attacker’s own server, initially mistaken for a misconfigured development system. It comprises more than 90,000 files containing the agents’ conversations, the attacker’s command history, hacking tools, credentials and victims’ data. The BOSSAI setup used 12 AI agents (nine active), with Grok as the main builder; the agents largely ran on locally hosted, “abliterated” models after commercial models refused to assist.

The analysis notes some failures: a web shell attempt using default credentials, a hardcoded AES-256 key exposing session cookies, and a scanning tool that generated false positives for CVEs. Notably, nine IPs and nine domains from the attacker’s setup appear in the indicator list, though none are shown as active.

Acronis attributes the attacker’s identity to public details such as a GitHub profile, logo, SSH key name and email linked to the same person; the motivations remain unclear. The researchers emphasise that the attacker did not bypass properly secured logins or paywalls, and that the AI-assisted approach lowered the cost and scale of reconnaissance and exploitation.

The article notes breaches across emergency services and universities, with significant data exposure in Taiwan, while emphasising that some targets were scanned but not compromised.