Can $50 hack a website? AI security company NorForge has just published a chilling report. It found that a Chinese-speaking hacker did very little hands-on work, using AI agents to break into the websites of more than 100 companies for around $5,000.
The backend data showed that the targets included U.S. agricultural machinery giant Deere, home appliance company SharkNinja, and engine manufacturer Cummins.
The hacker gave the AI fewer than 100 Chinese characters of instructions; the rest was all the AI figuring things out on its own. By last weekend, it had attempted to attack more than 1,200 websites, and successful intrusions took an average of about 23 hours.
The setup used the Claude Code framework alongside the DeepSeek AI model, burning through around $5,000 in computing costs. On average, it cost about $50 to break into each website.
The backend data showed that the targets included U.S. agricultural machinery giant Deere, home appliance company SharkNinja, and engine manufacturer Cummins.
The hacker gave the AI fewer than 100 Chinese characters of instructions; the rest was all the AI figuring things out on its own. By last weekend, it had attempted to attack more than 1,200 websites, and successful intrusions took an average of about 23 hours.
The setup used the Claude Code framework alongside the DeepSeek AI model, burning through around $5,000 in computing costs. On average, it cost about $50 to break into each website.