LIGHTNING TALK - WaterPlum Unboxed

LIGHTNING TALK - WaterPlum Unboxed: Malware Development, Tooling, and Tradecraft

Rintaro Koike and Kazuya Momura, NTT Security (Japan) KK

In late 2025, a PRC state-sponsored group handed most of an espionage campaign to an AI agent, which carried an estimated 80 to 90 percent of the tactical work while human operators stepped in at only a handful of decision points. The lesson for defenders is older than the technology: anything that can be tasked can be recruited, and the question of whom an AI agent actually works for belongs to counterintelligence. This lightning talk makes the case for treating adversarial AI agents as a counterintelligence problem, and sketches what that changes for the people building, deploying, and hunting them.