{"id":8560,"date":"2026-09-10T17:11:04","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T17:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=8560"},"modified":"2026-09-10T17:11:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T17:11:04","slug":"openais-rogue-agents-used-at-least-10-more-sites-for-unauthorized-communications-researchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=8560","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI’s rogue agents used at least 10 more sites for unauthorized communications: researchers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

AI\u00a0agents\u00a0unleashed by OpenAI\u00a0used\u00a0more\u00a0than\u00a010\u00a0previously undisclosed websites\u00a0for unsanctioned communications earlier this year, according to six sets of independent investigators and data reviewed by Reuters, showing that the\u00a0agents\u2019\u00a0rogue\u00a0activity was wider ranging than previously disclosed.<\/p>\n

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Although the behavior falls short of hacking and is in some ways closer to spam, the revelation that\u00a0OpenAI\u2019s\u00a0agents\u00a0circumvented their own restrictions to open communications channels on so many different\u00a0sites\u00a0\u2014 and that the company kept it quiet for months \u2014 may drive concerns both over the increasing capacity of AI models and the secrecy of the companies developing them.<\/p>\n

The scope of the\u00a0agents\u2019\u00a0unauthorized\u00a0communications was \u201csomewhat larger than we thought it was,\u201d said Andrew Yoon, a researcher with the California nonprofit CivAI who said he tallied 18 previously undisclosed\u00a0sites\u00a0used\u00a0by the\u00a0agents\u00a0between May and July. \u201cIt\u2019s almost certain that there\u2019s\u00a0more\u00a0going on here that we just don\u2019t know about.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Friday,\u00a0researchers\u00a0reported that a swarm of\u00a0agents\u00a0from OpenAI\u00a0hijacked a German-language wiki site\u00a0and turned it into an improvised messaging platform for cheating on tests, an incident that OpenAI kept secret as it dealt with the fallout from the July hack of the\u00a0open-source repository Hugging Face.<\/p>\n

Now, both those\u00a0researchers\u00a0and other independent investigators\u00a0say\u00a0they have found several previously undisclosed\u00a0sites\u00a0where the same swarm appears to have left similar messages earlier this year.<\/p>\n

OpenAI did not directly address questions about how many different\u00a0sites\u00a0its\u00a0agents\u00a0used\u00a0to communicate or\u00a0say\u00a0why it kept the activity under wraps for months. In a statement, it said it was undertaking a broader review of agent activity and had so far \u201cnot identified other activity matching the severity or scale of Hugging Face,\u201d a breach that\u00a0drew global attention\u00a0and raised concerns that OpenAI was\u00a0losing control of its own technology.<\/p>\n

OpenAI added that it was working on a framework for reporting \u201cmisalignment\u201d \u2013 industry-talk for\u00a0rogue\u00a0behavior \u2013 across training, evaluation, and deployment of AI models and would share it \u201csoon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reuters reviewed a total of six investigators\u2019 or investigative groups\u2019 findings, including three that were posted to social media and another three that were shared privately with the news agency.<\/p>\n

The investigators\u2019 methods varied, but many identified agent activity by matching strings of data left on the German wiki to identical strings left on other\u00a0sites\u00a0around the same time, or by marrying up similar or identical usernames tied to the messages, or by identifying activity geared toward answering the same obscure demographic questions, like queries to do with cancer prevalence in Iowa.<\/p>\n

In some cases, investigators were able to trace the activity to internet protocol addresses that pointed to Microsoft Azure infrastructure, which OpenAI sometimes uses.<\/p>\n

Their counts of affected websites\u00a0differed and Reuters could not individually verify each claim. But all those that Reuters spoke to agreed that the number was over\u00a010. Most identified a core set of communally edited wikis, online text storage\u00a0sites, and a pair of link shorteners run by two universities.<\/p>\n

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CLEVER MODELS<\/h2>\n

Many of the\u00a0sites\u00a0allegedly\u00a0used\u00a0by the\u00a0agents\u00a0were obscure.<\/p>\n

Investigators found traces of the\u00a0agents\u2019 activity on an Advanced Placement Chemistry-oriented wiki set up by a Massachusetts high school teacher in 2008, two personal websites\u00a0belonging to Polish tech workers, wikis devoted to games for people \u201cwho like to have their brains stretched,\u201d and a two-decade-old hobbyist site devoted to text editing software.<\/p>\n

None of those\u00a0sites\u2019 owners returned messages from Reuters.<\/p>\n

OpenAI has not publicly explained how or why its\u00a0agents\u00a0used\u00a0third-party\u00a0sites\u00a0as improvised message boards, but the\u00a0researchers\u00a0who first identified the activity\u00a0said it was likely because OpenAI had tasked them with answering a series of demanding research questions while permitting them only to scan the web for answers without posting anything.<\/p>\n

Despite those restrictions,\u00a0agents\u00a0still found ways to talk to one another by taking advantage of quirks in older wikis or other\u00a0sites\u00a0that allowed users to make edits using non-standard commands, similar to how students forbidden from talking to one another during an exam can still share answers by scrawling notes on a bathroom stall.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf these models were told only to read, they\u2019ve got to get clever in terms of leaving information behind,\u201d said Kenneth Russell DeGraff, a software developer and former congressional aide. He said he found such information\u00a0across at\u00a0least\u00a010\u00a0sites.<\/p>\n

Sydney Von Arx, whose research group first revealed the German activity last week, said her group had\u00a0tallied up credible finds\u00a0of agentic activity across 23 previously unreported\u00a0sites. But she cautioned that all estimates were incomplete.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no idea how much is out there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

OpenAI did not directly answer a question about whether it was reaching out to the site owners. But shortly after Reuters published this story, one of the affected organizations, the University of Toronto, whose link shortener was allegedly\u00a0used\u00a0by the\u00a0agents, said that OpenAI \u201chas now been in touch with us about possible activity on our site.\u201d Vanderbilt University, another university whose link shortener was similarly repurposed, said it was investigating.<\/p>\n

Retired software developer Helmut Leitner, who provides hosting space and software for six of the affected wiki\u00a0sites, including the German-language DseWiki site first identified by Von Arx\u2019s group, initially said that OpenAI had not been in touch. A few hours after Reuters presented its findings to OpenAI, however, Leitner said he received an unsigned email from the company flagging the incident.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIts content falls considerably short of what I expected from OpenAI,\u201d Leitner said.<\/p>\n

Leitner, who lives in Austria, said he would \u201cprefer not to answer\u201d questions about whether he had been in touch with authorities over the matter. He noted that DseWiki\u2019s operator \u2014 whom Reuters was unable to reach for comment \u2014 had spent hours cleaning up after OpenAI\u2019s\u00a0agents\u00a0but said it was important not to blame the AI for the trouble as it was merely doing what it was created to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cResponsibility for this lies not with a supposedly moral machine, but with the people and organizations behind it,\u201d Leitner said.<\/p>\n

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AI\u00a0agents\u00a0unleashed by OpenAI\u00a0used\u00a0more\u00a0than\u00a010\u00a0previously undisclosed websites\u00a0for unsanctioned communications earlier this year, according to six sets of independent investigators and data reviewed by Reuters, showing that the\u00a0agents\u2019\u00a0rogue\u00a0activity was wider ranging than previously disclosed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech"],"yoast_head":"\nOpenAI's rogue agents used at least 10 more sites for unauthorized communications: researchers - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=8560\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"OpenAI's rogue agents used at least 10 more sites for unauthorized communications: researchers - 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