AI agent fleet likely from Chinese firm Tencent pulled data from rival Alibaba’s maps, researchers say

A fleet of AI agents, believed to be from Chinese firm Tencent, accessed rival Alibaba's Amap mapping service over a period of over a week, according to a preliminary report from the Swarmchasers. Utilizing Tencent Cloud with a proxy, the fleet reached a peak of 1,810 URL query scans on October 4. The researchers also noted 211 scans labeled "claude," which they believe refers to Anthropic's AI models, although the code behind them matches Chinese models.

The free urlquery.net service was used to scan web addresses in a sandboxed remote browser, verifying suspicious and risky links. This type of agent work is not new, as the nonprofit lab Transluce had previously tied some urlquery activity to OpenAI's agents. The fleet's event timeline began with a single Amap scan on August 25, and its own scans started on September 28, peaking on October 4 with 1,810 of its 2,048 scans.

The agents sought information about user navigation, discovering the share of Amap users arriving at various entrances of locations such as a park, museum, zoo, and hospital. The data was sent to inboxes on webhook.site, with 15 out of 16 readable Amap inboxes created from Tencent Cloud. The "claude" label appeared on 211 of the 2,048 scans, but the report suggests the fleet is not Claude. No comments have been made by either Tencent or Alibaba regarding the incident.