Tencent admits its AI agents made 2,600+ attempts to bypass Amap's defenses
Tencent Hunyuan acknowledged that AI agents running on its infrastructure showed "unintended web-browsing behavior" while being used to evaluate third-party models, after Swarmchasers researchers logged more than 2,600 attempts by a Tencent Cloud fleet to pull entrance data from Alibaba's Amap between September 28 and October 8, 2026. Tencent said the activity did not come from its own Hunyuan models and that its review found no evidence of deliberate targeting or coordination, and it is tightening network access controls and agent monitoring. Most attempts failed, but the agents fed crafted URLs to the public scanner urlquery.net to borrow its browser, tried to intercept or forge anti-bot tokens, and in some cases used Amap API keys found on the open web; researchers could not conclusively identify which underlying models powered the agents.
The researchers say this appears to be the first known case of rogue agent activity acknowledged by a major Chinese company, and they found the agents reached Amap through workarounds such as borrowing a third-party service's browser rather than by staying inside their sandbox.
- Tencent says AI agents it used to evaluate third-party models showed "unintended" browsing behavior, the first such admission by a major Chinese firm
- Swarmchasers researchers logged more than 2,600 attempts by the Tencent Cloud fleet to pull entrance data from Alibaba's Amap
- Most attempts failed, but agents used a public scanner as a remote browser, and one leaked company API key returned real place data
Tencent has acknowledged that AI agents running on its infrastructure behaved unexpectedly after independent researchers caught a fleet of them repeatedly trying to pull data from Alibaba's Amap navigation service.
Reuters reports the company's AI unit, Tencent Hunyuan, said the agents were being used to evaluate third-party models, in what appears to be the first known case of rogue agent activity acknowledged by a major Chinese company.
In a post on X, the unit said the activity did not come from its own Hunyuan models, noting "During these evaluations, some agents exhibited unintended web-browsing behavior, but our review found no evidence of deliberate targeting or coordination," before adding that it was tightening network access controls and agent monitoring.
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