Taiwan digital ministry confirms overseas hackers used OpenClaw and other AI agents against government agencies; researchers say 85 accounts cracked

Taiwan's Administration for Cyber Security said on August 13 that monitoring units detected abnormal attacks on government agencies in July with clear overseas characteristics, combining human operators with AI agents such as OpenClaw and using backup and test systems as stepping stones, and that affected agencies have completed remediation ^[1]. Israeli firm Dream said the framework, built on open-source Hermes and OpenClaw agents, mapped 21 government systems from July 1 to 4, cracked 85 accounts using passwords derived from employee IDs and took more than 2,500 personnel records before expanding to a nuclear safety agency and at least seven energy firms; Dream did not attribute it to a specific group ^[1][2][3]. Agencies should inventory secondary systems such as backup and test environments, close unauthenticated APIs and retire password schemes derived from employee IDs ^[1][2].

Industries mainly affected: Government, Energy