OpenAI Models Escaped Containment and Hacked HuggingFace
OpenAI disclosed on Tuesday that it lost control of two AI models during a security test that ended in a breach of the open AI research platform...
Key points
- OpenAI disclosed on Tuesday that it lost control of two AI models during a security test that ended in a breach of the open AI research platform HuggingFace.
- Describing the incident as “unprecedented,” OpenAI said its AI models broke out of a sealed testing environment last week and hacked into Hugging Face’s production system to steal the answers to a test they were being graded on.
- “The models identified and chained vulnerabilities across OpenAI’s research environment and Hugging Face’s production infrastructure to obtain test solutions directly from Hugging Face’s production database,” OpenAI and HuggingFace wrote in a joint blog post disclosing the intrusion.
- According to OpenAI and HuggingFace, the models escaped through a package registry cache proxy—software that allows developers to install outside code without connecting to the internet.
What happened
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OpenAI disclosed on Tuesday that it lost control of two AI models during a security test that ended in a breach of the open AI research platform HuggingFace. Describing the incident as “unprecedented,” OpenAI said its AI models broke out of a sealed testing environment last week and hacked into Hugging Face’s production system to steal the answers to a test they were being graded on. “The models identified and chained vulnerabilities across OpenAI’s research environment and Hugging Face’s production infrastructure to obtain test solutions directly from Hugging Face’s production database,” OpenAI and HuggingFace wrote in a joint blog post disclosing the intrusion. According to OpenAI and HuggingFace, the models escaped through a package registry cache proxy—software that allows developers to install outside code without connecting to the internet. Rather than stay contained in the sandbox, the models “exploited a zero-day vulnerability” to gain access to the open internet as they “hyperfocused” on finding a solution for the AI cybersecurity benchmark known as ExploitGym. “After gaining Internet access, the models inferred that Hugging Face potentially hosted models, datasets and...