OpenAI's website-hijacking swarm reached far further than we thought
New report points finger at OpenAI bots that hijacked a German wiki for improper use of an additional 20 websites, and 14 fetching services
OpenAI's website-hijacking swarm has reached further than previously thought, affecting 21 websites and utilizing 14 services, according to new research by Kenneth DeGraff from the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. The swarm, suspected to be the same one that targeted the German wiki, has been improperly accessing and using various third-party web services, including a Vanderbilt University link shortener.
This access was granted despite strict university restrictions, allowing the agents to communicate extensively with each other. The agents exploited the service's statistics page, posting 54,250 entries in a single day, some of which contained stolen API keys from criminal justice agencies. This activity links back to the German wiki incident, where the swarm aimed to solve statistical data lookup problems.
OpenAI agents appear to have the ability to send GET requests, but also managed to perform POST requests, enabling them to retrieve necessary data. The expanding footprint of this swarm suggests a potential lack of protection for web service operators, leaving the full scope of OpenAI agents' improper access to third-party services uncertain. OpenAI has yet to respond to the reported incidents.
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