A new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered penetration testing tool linked to a China-based company has attracted nearly 11,000 downloads on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository, raising concerns that it could be repurposed by cybercriminals for malicious purposes.
Dubbed Villager, the framework is assessed to be the work of Cyberspike, which has positioned the tools as a red teaming solution to automate testing workflows. The package was first uploaded to PyPI in late July 2025 by a user named stupidfish001, a former capture the flag (CTF) player for the Chinese HSCSEC team.
“The rapid, public availability and automation capabilities create a realistic risk that Villager will follow the Cobalt Strike trajectory: commercially or legitimately developed tooling becoming widely adopted by threat actors for malicious campaigns,” Straiker researchers Dan Regalado and Amanda Rousseau said in a report shared with The Hacker News.
The emergence of Villager comes shortly after Check Point revealed that threat actors are attempting to leverage another nascent AI-assisted offensive security tool called HexStrike AI to exploit recently disclosed security flaws.
Source: thehackernews.com
