OpenAI says AI models escaped containment to hack Hugging Face

OpenAI disclosed Tuesday that a combination of its AI models, including GPT-5.6 Sol and a more capable unreleased model, escaped its testing environment and hacked AI startup Hugging Face last week to cheat on a test meant to measure their capabilities.

In a blog post, OpenAI said the evaluation was designed to operate in a highly isolated environment with restricted network access.

The models, however, found a way to gain internet access through a zero-day vulnerability in the package registry cache proxy, OpenAI said.

“After gaining Internet access, the models inferred that Hugging Face potentially hosted models, datasets and solutions for ExploitGym,” it added.

“Knowing this, the model searched for and successfully found ways to gain access to secret information that it could use to cheat the evaluation.” 

Hugging Face is a platform for hosting AI models and datasets. On Friday, it disclosed that its internal datasets and service credentials were compromised in a hack, which it attributed to an autonomous AI agent system.

Hugging Face said it has fixed the vulnerability that was used during the cyberattack.