FlagThis — Daily Cybersecurity Intelligence Briefing

CARBONATO is a Docker‑based botnet first observed in October 2024 that uses an autonomous LLM‑powered AI agent (Hermes) as its command‑and‑control engine. The botnet spreads by exploiting unauthenticated Docker daemon APIs and pushing malicious images to public, unauthenticated container registries. Once installed, Hermes steals API keys, cloud tokens, and SSH credentials, which are then used to pay for external LLM API calls, financing the botnet’s own AI‑driven C2. This self‑funding, adaptive C2 model enables persistent, evasive operations across global cloud and on‑premise Docker hosts.