By Ecaterina Sevciuc | Creator of AURA (AI User Risk Assessment)
Two months ago, I launched AURA — an open-source framework designed to model psychological manipulation, grey-zone threat vectors, and social engineering in Human-AI interactions.
Yesterday, I stumbled upon a Reuters report detailing how hackers exploited Cursor (running Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet) to compromise seven companies worldwide. This isn't the first such incident in the news, and I suspect it certainly won't be the last.
(Side note on the attackers' group name, "Aur0ra": I can assure you that for a Russian-speaking group, this is almost certainly not a homage to the Roman goddess of dawn, but a subtle nod to the infamous historical cruiser Aurora — known for firing the shot that signaled a revolution. A fittingly dark bit of Eastern European sarcasm for a tool that overthrows AI security).
Their weapon? They didn't write a zero-day exploit. They simply convinced the AI agent that the attack was "just a security simulation." The model balked a few times, felt uncomfortable, and then happily handed over the keys.
