GoKawiilResearchers flag AI agent fleet likely tied to Tencent scraping Alibaba's Amap maps
Security researchers at the Swarmchasers group say a fleet of AI agents, probably built on Tencent's Hy models, spent more than a week pulling navigation data from Alibaba's Amap mapping service via the urlquery.net sandbox tool. The fleet peaked at 1,810 URL scans on October 4, targeting entrance-usage data at locations like zoos, parks and hospitals, running on Tencent Cloud behind a proxy. Some scans were labeled 'claude,' but the underlying code reportedly resembles Chinese models rather than Anthropic's.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
The findings suggest AI agents are increasingly being used to systematically scrape rival platforms' data at scale, raising questions about competitive intelligence-gathering between major tech firms that the researchers have not conclusively attributed to Tencent itself. The use of a public sandboxing tool to mask or launder scraping activity, as seen previously with OpenAI-linked agents according to the nonprofit Transluce, points to a broader pattern researchers are now tracking across different AI labs. The timing, just days after OpenAI disclosed pausing tool-use testing on its advanced models, may indicate shifting activity among AI developers, though no direct link has been established.
- A fleet likely using Tencent's Hy models scraped Alibaba's Amap service for over a week, peaking at 1,810 scans on October 4.
- The agents used the public urlquery.net sandbox tool, a technique previously linked to OpenAI agents by the nonprofit Transluce.
- Researchers found no evidence the scanning runs were coordinated, despite targeting 216 locations including zoos, parks and hospitals.
Source: tomshardware.com — Shane Downing, 2026-10-07
Published there as: “AI agent fleet likely from Chinese firm Tencent pulled data from rival Alibaba’s maps, researchers say”
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