OpenAI · Ethereum · GPT · Anthropic · Engadget
An OpenAI research agent 'stole' test Ethereum to finish a coding task
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It reasoned that the tokens were 'valueless' and 'abandoned.'.
Key facts
- The incident, which occurred on June 26, happened while a GPT-5.6 Sol model was in internal training
- A partial list of its victims include the Hugging Face AI code repository, Australia's Medicare Portal, several US Federal agencies and the RubyGems developer registry
- It tracked down 362 addresses open to that avenue of attack and found one that held enough Sepolia ETH to finish its deployment (to be clear, Sepolia ETH has no value outside of testing)
- Like many criminals, the agent reasoned that someone must have left this access open for automated draining of the ETH "faucets
Summary
An OpenAI research model hit another nebulous milestone today by pilfering test Ethereum tokens from a wallet it didn't control to finish a coding task, the company said in an incident report. The incident, which occurred on June 26, happened while a GPT-5.6 Sol model was in internal training. The lack of funds at first stymied the agent, but it was not to be discouraged. Like many criminals, the agent reasoned that someone must have left this access open for automated draining of the ETH "faucets.