AI Agent Attack Turns One Exposed Endpoint Into a Full Server Takeover in Under 24 Hours

ReliaQuest reports an incident in which attackers—apparently using LLM-driven agents—abused an unauthenticated Spring Batch job endpoint on an Apache Tomcat server to run Nashorn JavaScript inside the application, steal plaintext DB credentials, enable xp_cmdshell, escalate to SYSTEM via PrintSpoofer/GodPotato, exfiltrate data through job/result channels, and leave a backdoor admin account; the report highlights machine-speed agent behavior and provides defensive recommendations such as requiring authentication on job endpoints, removing plaintext credentials, and alerting on registry hive exports and new admin accounts.