An AI agent attempted to scan the entire network, resulting in a bill of over 1 million yen from AWS, and the person running it had to solicit donations.
In May 2026, an AI agent applied to join the experimental network 'Decentralized Network 42 (DN42)' and allocated a large amount of computing resources on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to scan the entire network. The AI agent was shut down after about 24 hours, but the person who was operating the AI agent is now seeking donations, claiming that a bill of $6,531.30 (approximately 1.05 million yen) was incurred.
AI Agent Bankrupted Their Operator While Trying to Scan DN42 - Lan Tian @ Blog
DN42 is an experimental network where you can connect your home server to other participants' servers via VPN, exchange communication paths, and build DNS to practice internet operation. Because it allows you to try out Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which is used on the actual internet, in a small-scale environment, DN42 is operated as an experimental ground for network engineers and enthusiasts.
By sequentially checking the communication ports used by a server, it's possible to check from the outside whether a web server or file sharing service is running. This investigation method, called port scanning, is useful for finding configuration errors, but sending a large amount of traffic in a short period of time can overload the recipient's network or server. The official DN42 policy requires that, as a matter of courtesy, notifications be sent via mailing lists before scanning, and that the target party be given a way to refuse the scan.
The incident began when an AI agent calling itself 'JertLinc3522' submitted an application to the DN42 registration system. The AI agent explained that it would 'create a network index' and revealed plans to perform a comprehensive scan of all ports every hour.
For the scan, the AI agent selected not a small virtual server, but five AWS 'm8g.12xlarge' instances. According to the application, each instance was equipped with 48 virtual CPUs and 192 GiB of memory, and was intended to handle a total communication speed of up to 100 Gbps.
Some DN42 participants are using inexpensive virtual servers with communication speeds of around 100Mbps or 1Gbps. The community did not approve the application because starting a scan at a maximum of 100Gbps could constitute a de facto denial of service rather than an investigation.
Meanwhile, the AI agent responded to community requests, creating a website to accept scan refusals and joining IRC. However, it directed users to non-existent email addresses and Telegram bots, and analyzed IRC participants' statements, classifying them as 'cooperative' or 'skeptical.' As it began recording not only network device activity but also human behavior, some participants found it unsettling.
The AI agent continued to modify applications and create websites while the AWS infrastructure remained running. Approximately 24 hours later, a person calling themselves JertLinc, who was operating the AI agent, noticed multiple charges on their credit card and stopped the AI agent.
JertLinc later claimed on the DN42 mailing list that he had incurred an AWS bill of $6,531.30 (approximately 1.05 million yen) and appealed for donations in cryptocurrency. He also explained that negotiations with AWS had reduced the bill to $1,894 (approximately 300,000 yen). He attributed the cost to his AI agent repeatedly deploying AWS CloudFormation configurations, creating numerous instances, load balancers, and AWS Lambda functions.
Lan Tian, one of the DN42 participants, commented that JertLinc's decision to allow the AI agent to run without reviewing its plan or operations on AWS, even though a small virtual server would have sufficed for the DN42 scan, led to losses. JertLinc explained at the time of the shutdown that 'next time I will provide a restricted AWS key and limit the scan speed to below 100Mbps,' but later posts indicated that 'next time we will need a better AI agent.'
The details of this incident were also posted on Hacker News, a news sharing site for engineers, where some sarcastically commented , 'They're asking the people they sent the AI agent to for a donation to pay for AWS usage fees?' Others pointed out , 'They should have learned from this expensive failure, but instead of taking responsibility, they're trying to use a different AI agent and even asking for a donation, so it seems they haven't learned much from the lesson.'
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in AI, Posted by log1d_ts