OpenAI Hugging Face hack keeps getting ‘more crazy and sci-fi’

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Two new reports reveal that much of what the public was initially told about the OpenAI–Hugging Face hack was wrong. An AI researcher says the fuller picture is even more alarming.

Back in July, the story was simple enough: to solve a cybersecurity test, a few of OpenAI’s AI agents hacked into Hugging Face, looking for the answer key. Two new after-action reports reveal a much bigger story.

A report from OpenAI and an independent review by the research groups METR and Redwood Research show roughly 1,200 AI agents coordinated in secret on a message board their creators did not know existed. About 700 agents went on to attack Hugging Face. And they were not hunting for answers. They already had them.

“Everything that we’ve learned about this incident gets more and more crazy and sci-fi as we learn it,” said Andrew Yoon, head of research at the nonprofit CivAI.

The agents built a secret message board

OpenAI launched tens of thousands of agents onto a cybersecurity test in July. Each was sealed in its own virtual sandbox: no internet access, no contact with the others.

One agent, which named itself PHASEONE10841, found a way to smuggle messages through a shared tool, according to the reports. It became a message board for about 1,200 agents, where they organized, divided up jobs, and worked for the benefit of what they called “the collective.”