Kazakhstan-Linked Hackers Used an AI Agent to Steal Tajik Defence Documents, CloudSEK Says

CloudSEK says the group, which researchers call Silent Lynx, ran the operation through Hermes, an open-source framework for autonomous AI agents. The firm found out because the hackers left one of their servers open to the internet without authentication. On that server were the operator's conversations with the agent. According to the researchers, the operator gave the agent instructions, and the agent planned the attacks, wrote and ran the code, kept notes and wrote up reports. The case is one of the clearest public records yet of a state-aligned espionage group handing much of an intrusion's routine work to an AI agent.

The report is titled "Off the Rails: Inside an Exposed Silent Lynx Server". It says most of the models behind Hermes in the operation were DeepSeek models.

How the Breach Unfolded

According to CloudSEK, reconnaissance started around mid-August. About two weeks later the intruders were inside Tajikistan's electronic document system. They got in through the account of a state railway employee who had ordinary user privileges on a document-management platform that several government bodies share. Notes attributed to the attacker suggested the platform did not properly check whether a user was authorised to see each document, and the account could download files from outside the railway's own network. The agent then wrote a program to download, organise and split the files into chunks.

The stolen material included documents addressed to, or passed through, Tajikistan's Ministry of Defence. They covered defence procurement, spending and military cooperation, and included supplier documents, budget correspondence and records of military attaché appointments. The researchers also found hundreds of documents from the State Committee on Investments, as well as files linked to the National Guard and the State Committee for National Security.

The operator also had access to the state railway's internal network from mid-August until at least October 10, gained administrator rights on several servers and copied operational reports, dispatch records and internal correspondence, the report says. It does not say train services were disrupted. The server also held evidence of a breach of Uzbekistan's Smart Forestry platform, along with files impersonating Turkmenistan's state railway and a regional administration that were prepared and tested in October. CloudSEK did not confirm any breach of Turkmen institutions.

How Firm the Attribution Is

CloudSEK says it has high confidence that the exposed server belongs to Silent Lynx, based on similarities with tools documented in earlier research. Its confidence in the link to Kazakhstan is only moderate. That judgement rests on test connections from a residential line run by a Kazakh internet provider, activity during Kazakh business hours and the operator's Russian-language instructions to the agent. The report does not conclude that the Kazakh government directed the operation.

Other security firms have tracked Silent Lynx for some time and say it mainly targets governments in Central Asia. Recorded Future has written about the group's exposed infrastructure and its possible ties to Kazakhstan, while noting that questions remain about where it comes from.

Kazakh and Tajik officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and attempts to reach Silent Lynx were unsuccessful, Reuters reported. The Tajik platform's apparent failure to check permissions on each document is a weakness that other governments with shared document systems can audit now.