Internet-facing AI tools grew 63 per cent in nine months, reaching close to 268,000 systems, according to Censys’s fifth annual State of the Internet Report. The figure covers not just public-facing chatbots but the connective infrastructure that links AI tools to data sources, applications, and user accounts.
The most widely exposed product is n8n, a workflow automation platform, with nearly 114,000 hosts visible on the internet. OpenClaw, a personal AI agent assistant, follows at roughly 54,000.
The United States accounts for 62,687 of exposed AI hosts, China for 42,511, and Germany for 31,222, together making up just over half the global total.
Industrial control system exposures present a separate concern. Censys identified approximately 134,000 internet-exposed hosts running ICS software, with roughly 70 per cent sitting on consumer and mobile networks rather than identifiable enterprise infrastructure.
That distribution makes it harder for researchers and authorities to locate the device owners and address the exposure. North America accounts for 38 per cent of the exposed global ICS landscape, followed by Europe at 32 per cent and Asia at 25 per cent.
On threat infrastructure, the report draws a clear geographic split. China hosts 36.6 per cent of malicious host-level infrastructure such as command-and-control servers and remote access tooling. The United States hosts 45.5 per cent of web-based threats including phishing pages, while China accounts for 20.9 per cent of that category.
Software maintenance showed mixed results. Across four products studied, Progress Telerik Report Server, Jenkins, Cleo MFT, and Microsoft SharePoint Server, organisations moved toward newer versions over the study period. The oldest versions, however, remained largely in place.
“The Internet is constantly changing, and understanding how it changes is critical to modern cybersecurity,” said Zakir Durumeric, Co-Founder and CEO of Censys. “New technologies such as AI introduce new layers of infrastructure. Identifying and continuously monitoring Internet-facing systems is essential to realising AI’s value without introducing unmanaged risk.”
The report draws on data from the Censys Internet Map, which continuously monitors global internet infrastructure.
