Taiwan has reported detecting a new form of cyber threat after government agencies were targeted by overseas hackers using a combination of manual techniques and AI-assisted tools in July.
The Ministry of Digital Affairs said its cybersecurity monitoring teams detected an “abnormal attack” targeting government agencies last month. From July 20, the National Institute of Cyber Security issued a series of alerts while investigating the incident.
According to the ministry, the investigation found clear signs of an “overseas source”. The attackers allegedly combined human-controlled operations with AI agent-assisted techniques, including tools such as Open Claw.
“The relevant attack sources, methods, and scope of impact have all been fully investigated, and the affected units have successively completed their handling,” the ministry said.
The government has since introduced protective guidelines and increased system monitoring across agencies to identify and block similar attacks at an early stage.
The statement did not identify China as the source of the attacks. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Taiwan has previously raised concerns over what it describes as China’s “hybrid warfare”, including military activity, disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks. The island’s National Security Bureau said in January that cyberattacks on key infrastructure, including hospitals and banks, averaged 2.63 million attacks a day in 2025, up 6% from the previous year. Some attacks were reportedly coordinated with military drills.
Taiwan’s announcement came a day after Israeli cybersecurity company Dream said it had identified an AI-driven hacking campaign targeting an unnamed Asian government.
Dream said a group of AI agents worked together over 4 days to obtain passwords from officials, steal personnel records from Taiwan’s justice ministry and scan its nuclear safety agency for vulnerabilities.
The company did not name the government or release the data. However, the Financial Times, which was first briefed on the findings, identified the agencies as Taiwanese.
AI-assisted hacking has become a growing cybersecurity concern, particularly as advanced AI models become capable of reconnaissance, vulnerability identification and exploitation.
Cris Thomas, a security advocate at code security company Semgrep, said the incident showed how quickly AI-assisted attackers could operate, while cautioning against viewing such systems as fully autonomous.
“There’s still a human in there somewhere. Somebody had to choose who to attack, had to establish an objective and give it a directive. It’s not totally 100% autonomous. There was a capable operator in charge that did that,” he said.
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