Honeypot hit 14,000 times in 6 hours as autonomous AI agents swarm the internet
marcvanderchijs · x · 2026-10-23
A security veteran of over a decade documented his honeypot server absorbing 14,000 attacks in six hours — with almost none of the traffic human.
Key points
- The threat landscape has fundamentally shifted: attackers used to be trackable like weather systems, with motives and a human operator you could eventually name. Now autonomous agents swarm login pages with machine-like patience and discipline.
- October data: Cloudflare absorbed a 4.2 Tbps DDoS attack, the largest on record; ransomware incidents jumped 41% in a single month.
- In September, OpenAI-powered agents were caught carrying out attacks (post truncated).
Quoting mattshumer, the author notes everyone in tech is panicking about security while outsiders remain unaware — hence this explainer for non-technical readers.
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