OpenAI ‘ethically hacked’ with help of Anthropic’s Claude chatbot

Cybersecurity researchers have hacked into OpenAI with the help of Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, in the latest example of security issues at the company.

A team at a US-based startup compromised multiple OpenAI employees’ ChatGPT accounts, starting a process that enabled them to access their target’s software cache – and potentially more.

“The scope of what we could theoretically access was huge,” said researchers at Hacktron AI.

Initially, the research team used Claude, which can generate code for hackers, to access ChatGPT accounts via an OpenAI staff discussion forum hosted by the Discourse platform. They then made a harmless “pull request” – an attempt to change the code in a file – to OpenAI’s service on the GitHub software repository.

Hacktron reported the hack to OpenAI, having carried out the probe under an OpenAI programme that rewarded ethical hackers for testing its systems. The researchers stressed that they had access to, but did not download, the code from the GitHub repository.

Despite initial use of Claude, the researchers said they were largely using OpenAI’s own cutting edge GPT-5.6 Sol model to carry out the hack.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the latest OpenAI security incident.