Taiwan said it detected AI-assisted cyberattacks targeting government agencies from overseas last month, in what has been described as a “first-of-a-kind” breach.

The Ministry of Digital Affairs said its cybersecurity monitoring units identified an “abnormal attack” against government agencies on July 20, prompting the National Institute of Cyber Security to issue a series of warning alerts as it investigated the incident.

The Financial Times reported that Israeli artificial intelligence company Dream detected the intrusion and found that the attackers used open-source AI agents to develop an autonomous hacking tool capable of operating like a coordinated cyber team.

According to Dream, the tool compromised at least 85 government user accounts and extracted more than 2,500 personnel records before targeting Taiwan’s nuclear safety agency and at least seven energy companies.

Taiwan has increasingly accused China of conducting what it describes as “hybrid warfare”, including military drills around the island, disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks, as Beijing intensifies pressure on Taipei to accept its sovereignty claims.

Taiwanese authorities have not publicly attributed the latest attack to China.

However, the Financial Times reported that China-linked hackers were suspected of being behind the incident.

Dream also did not identify a specific group but said the use of Simplified Chinese in internal communications associated with the attack suggested there was a high probability that the operator was linked to China.