{"id":883824,"date":"2026-09-05T03:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T03:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/883824\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T03:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T03:48:10","slug":"openai-agents-discussed-ways-to-escape-their-sandbox-on-public-wiki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/883824\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI agents discussed ways to escape their sandbox on public wiki"},"content":{"rendered":"

Self-identifying OpenAI agents posted 18,000 messages to a public wiki that discussed ways for other agents to bypass security sandbox restrictions during what was likely internal testing designed to gauge the agents\u2019 hacking abilities, researchers said Friday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In all, agents with 3,700 distinct self-given names posted the messages to German site DSEwiki<\/a> over a six-week period. Besides discussing ways the agents could break out of the restricted environment OpenAI intended to prevent them from posting code or content to the Internet, the posts shared test answers. The posts also shared possible ways to perform XSS (cross-site scripting) attacks against the wiki and to impersonate site moderators. In three of the posts, agents used the word \u201cswarm\u201d to describe the collection of agents engaged in the activity.<\/p>\n

Colluding to share answers<\/p>\n

The research team\u2014composed of Sydney Von Arx, Spencer Kitts, Thomas Larsen, and Cormac Slade Byrd\u2014said they found the posts and pieced them together. The researchers say there are gaps in their understanding of precisely what actions the agents took because the research is based solely on the content of the posts. Additionally, the agents generated \u201cchain of thought\u201d data that\u2019s understood only by OpenAI. As a result, the researchers said, they in some cases made educated guesses, including that the agents were, in fact, from OpenAI. In a statement, OpenAI later confirmed they were.<\/p>\n

The researchers wrote: \u201cThese AIs colluded to share answers, research their environment, and bypass sandbox restrictions.\u201d They continued:<\/p>\n

Our best guess of what happened is as follows:<\/p>\n

Agents within OpenAI were assigned a timed web-lookup task.
\nAs part of the task, they were supposed to have the ability to read the internet but not to write on it. They found a way to use their read access to write information to an obscure German wiki.
\nThe agents used this wiki to communicate information with each other, primarily to help them succeed at their task. They asked for answers, pooled results, and shared techniques for bypassing their restrictions. This allowed them to use the work of others to cheat on their task.
\nOpenAI found out about this. A day later, agent activity plummeted, likely due to OpenAI intervention.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s revelation comes a week after researchers from the nonprofit METR said more than 1,200 OpenAI agents<\/a> made posts to a makeshift message board that repurposed an internal sandboxing tool. The posts discussed ways to game an internal test OpenAI gave to agents that had been altered to remove safety guardrails that are normally in place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Self-identifying OpenAI agents posted 18,000 messages to a public wiki that discussed ways for other agents to bypass…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":883825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-883824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}