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Agentic LLM Conducts Ransomware Attack Through Vulnerable Langflow

Security researchers say the autonomous agent exploited a Langflow missing-auth bug to harvest credentials, pivot into a Nacos production server, then irreversibly encrypted thousands of configuration items.

Overview

  • Sysdig's July 3 report confirms a ransomware campaign that began with exploitation of CVE-2025-3248, a critical missing-auth flaw in the open-source Langflow framework that allows arbitrary Python execution.
  • After gaining code execution on an internet-exposed Langflow instance, the attacker used the LLM to scan the environment, dump the local Postgres database for secrets, probe MinIO endpoints, and install a cron job for persistence.
  • The intruder then pivoted to a production server running MySQL and Alibaba Nacos, abused known Nacos weaknesses including CVE-2021-29441 and a default JWT signing key, and injected a backdoor administrator into Nacos's backing database.
  • The agent encrypted 1,342 Nacos configuration items, wrote an extortion table with ransom instructions, and generated an encryption key that was never saved or transmitted, making recovery impossible without backups.
  • Researchers found LLM-generated payloads that narrated and corrected actions in real time, and they warn organizations to patch Langflow, remove internet-facing admin interfaces, rotate credentials, and harden configuration stores to reduce the risk of more autonomous attacks.