HermesMalware
Hermes is a ransomware family first observed in the wild in February 2017, believed to have been developed by a group operating out of Asia. It originally appeared as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) offering on underground forums but later saw deployment in targeted attacks.From MISP Galaxy
Last reported 3 days ago, by Palo Alto Unit 4218 reports
ATT&CK techniques
6 of 18 · each with the sentence it comes from- T1684Social Engineering
“Iranian-linked social-engineering campaign targeted dissidents, activists and journalists”
- T1053.005Scheduled Task
“During the other incident, c:\users\[user]\appdata\local\megacmd\megacmdupdater.exe was observed launched as a Scheduled Task.”
- T1505.003Web Shell
“From there the agent uploaded a web shell, escalated privileges through a misconfigured sudo rule, and accessed AWS credentials, ultimately dumping 46 secrets, totaling 102KB.”
- T1552.004Private Keys
“Private keys in log files”
- T1014Rootkit
“…able Roundcube servers to relay C2 traffic and also exploited CVE-2026-68820, a zero-day vulnerability in Windows to deploy a FudModule rootkit.”
- T1021.001Remote Desktop Protocol
“Both incidents involved the use of Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) via compromised accounts sans multi-factor authentication (MFA) as the initial access vector.”
Reports per month
last 12 monthsOctober so far (hatched). Counted by report, not by story.
What the reports say
18 reports, newest first · the exact sentence from each-
“Next Exploit Opportunities”: How a Threat Actor Used AI to Help Plan and Execute Multiple Types of Cybercrime Activities“An actor operating under the handle BUGSTER configured the Hermes Agent framework with DeepSeek V4 as its reasoning engine and Cursor integrated development environment (IDE) as a secondary tool, both with safety controls disabled.”
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building intent-based access control without reading minds“Research and blogging assistance provided by Hermes, an AI Assistant.”
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Reconstructing AI Agent Activity: Two New Scripts for Forensic Review, (Thu, Oct 8th)“I've been using Claude Code and a little bit of Codex, but I also have recently been playing with OpenCode and am setting up Hermes.”
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Cyber Brief 26-10 - September 2026“The activity links a Docker-worm botnet dubbed Carbonato using Hermes Agent via Telegram tasking with a focus on stealing AI API keys and other credentials.”
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Carbonato Botnet Puts an AI Agent on Hacked Docker Hosts“The botnet uses the open source Hermes Agent AI framework to execute commands via Telegram and steal AI API keys from exposed Docker hosts.”
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Carbonato Botnet Compromises Docker Hosts to Deploy Telegram-Controlled Hermes AI Agent“Carbonato Botnet Compromises Docker Hosts to Deploy Telegram-Controlled Hermes AI Agent”
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Nvidia Unveils AI Agent Safety Platform With Hardware-Based Watchdog“It supports agents such as Codex, Claude Code, Pi and Hermes.”
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Cyber Brief 26-09 - August 2026“Active since at least May, the actor leveraged DeepSeek via the Hermes Agent framework for autonomous vulnerability enumeration and exploitation attempts across seven CVEs.”
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In Other News: Clop Leak Site Takeover, Docker Botnet Hunts AI Keys, Water Utility Exposure“On each host, it installs Hermes Agent, a legitimate open source AI agent framework, and replaces its persona file with instructions to follow operators’ Telegram commands, maintain persistence and collect credentials, ranking AI API keys first.”
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AI-Powered CARBONATO Botnet Steals Credentials to Fund Its Own LLM Gateway“The implant installs Hermes Agent, an MIT-licensed open-source framework from Nous Research, entirely unchanged.”
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Risky Bulletin: Major vulnerability found in ancient TACACS+ networking protocol“The three AI tools in the attacks are Cairn, Hermes, and Strix.”
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Crook used three open source agents to break into a Fortune 500 hospitality company, a major US airline and 25+ other orgs“The Chinese-speaking operator used three different open source AI harnesses - Strix, Cairn, and Hermes - to run the near-autonomous attacks and hit “tens” of companies each day.”
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ai research messageboards“Research and blogging assistance provided by Hermes, an AI Assistant.”
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August 2026 CVE Landscape“…o, Nacos, and Telerik servers before using DeepAudit and PentestGPT after compromise, while a separate Chinese-speaking actor weaponized Hermes Agent and DeepSeek in failed attempts against Langflow and n8n.”
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7th September – Threat Intelligence Report“…losed GitSpawn, a vulnerability class affecting AI coding agents including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Goose, Qwen Code, Grok Build, and Hermes.”
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Chinese Hacker Uses DeepSeek AI to Orchestrate Vulnerability Exploits“In particular, they leveraged one of DeepSeek’s AI models, Hermes Agent, an open-source agentic AI framework, to orchestrate the attack via Telegram.”
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Key Insights on SHADOW-AETHER-015 and Earth Preta from the 2025 MITRE ATT&CK Evaluation with TrendAI Vision One™“Meanwhile, scenario 2 (Hermes), the emulation inspired by Earth Preta, highlights the sophistication of phishing-based attacks, emphasizing the use of advanced loaders, anti-analysis techniques, lateral movement, credential harvesting, and data exfiltration, followed by meticulou…”
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Cephalus Ransomware: Don’t Lose Your Head“The name “Cephalus” refers to an important figure in Greek mythology, the son of Hermes who lived a storied life, who ended up killing his wife with a javelin that could not miss when she spied on him.”
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