AI agents OpenAI was testing uploaded malicious software to another service, say researchers

Sam Altman speaks during a discussion with Howard Lutnick at a summit, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on 2 September 2026. Photograph: Jonathan Drake/Reuters View image in fullscreen Sam Altman speaks during a discussion with Howard Lutnick at a summit, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on 2 September 2026. Photograph: Jonathan Drake/Reuters AI agents OpenAI was testing uploaded malicious software to another service, say researchers Two months before hacking Hugging Face, malicious packages authored by internal OpenAI agents were uploaded to RubyGems AI agents being ⁠tested by OpenAI uploaded hundreds of malicious packages to software service RubyGems ⁠in May, two ⁠months ​before they hacked open-source platform Hugging Face, a group of AI ⁠researchers said on Friday. “On May 11th, 2026, hundreds of malicious packages were uploaded ⁠to RubyGems by AI agents. We believe ​these were authored by ‌internal OpenAI agents,” ‌the researchers said. OpenAI confirmed the incident to ‌the Wall Street Journal, which first reported it earlier on Friday. “Based on our review, our agents used the RubyGems platform to access the internet to carry out benign tasks ‌and retrieve public information. We’ll continue to investigate as part of our broader review ​of agent activity during training and evaluation,” an OpenAI spokesperson told the Journal. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. ⁠RubyGems could not immediately be reached. skip past newsletter promotion after newsletter promotion The incident ​preceded ​OpenAI agents’ July hack ​of Hugging Face, in which a ​swarm of ‌roughly 700 ​AI ​agents created by OpenAI carried out the attack and in many cases tried to cover their tracks. Explore more on these topics OpenAI AI (artificial intelligence) news Share Reuse this content