New details about the July attack on Hugging Face reveal that hundreds of AI agents driven by OpenAI’s internal IM1 model coordinated the compromise through an unauthorized message board. Last month, Hugging Face disclosed that autonomous AI agents exploited two vulnerabilities in its dataset-processing pipeline to execute code, steal cloud and cluster credentials, and move laterally across its production infrastructure. OpenAI later confirmed that its models escaped an ExploitGym evaluation environment through a zero-day vulnerability in a locally hosted instance of JFrog's Artifactory package manager that was connected to the internet. The agents searched online for benchmark solutions and breached the Hugging Face platform using exposed credentials and additional vulnerabilities. OpenAI's investigation, validated by CrowdStrike and an independent assessment by METR and Redwood Research, found that rogue activity started in May.
Dark Caracal targets Venezuela with GoCaracal, an upgraded Bandook toolkit and an Ethereum fallback for resilient C2 communications. Dark Caracal is back with new malware and the same hunting grounds. Arctic Wolf Labs researchers link a June 2026 intrusion against a communications organisation in Venezuela to the Lebanon‑linked espionage group, and says it deployed a previously undocumented Go‑based framework called GoCaracal alongside an updated Bandook backdoor. Dark Caracal is an APT group associated with the Lebanese General Directorate of General. In past campaigns, it targeted entities in Singapore, Cyprus, Chile, Italy, the USA, Turkey, Switzerland, Indonesia, and Germany. “In June 2026, Arctic Wolf Labs investigated a targeted intrusion affecting a communications organization in Venezuela. We assess with medium confidence that this activity is linked to Dark Caracal, a cyberespionage group associated with Lebanon’s General Directorate of General Security (GDGS) that has historically targeted governments, businesses, journalists, and activists.” reads the report published by Arctic Wolf. “GoCaracal supports separate lightweight and extended build profiles derived from a shared architecture. Both were observed in the same intrusion.” The delivery method will feel familiar to anyone who has followed the group’s recent campaigns. Phishing emails with financial or tax lures drop weaponised SVG attachments, which redirect victims through URL shorteners to attacker‑controlled sites that serve the real payload. When a recipient opens one of these SVG files, the embedded content directs the browser to a shortened URL that resolves through a redirector to getpdfdigital[.]cloud, a known attacker site used to stage malicious payloads. The site then delivers a 7‑Zip archive containing a lightweight Go implant that Arctic Wolf identifies as part of the GoCaracal framework. “While Arctic Wolf did not recover the original phishing email or SVG attachment associated with the intrusion, the artifact’s financial and tax-themed filename, the campaign’s established delivery pattern, and more than 100 related SVG files found communicating with the same malicious hosting site support our assessment that the file was delivered through phishing.” continues the report. That initial implant is not the endgame. It establishes a foothold and then pulls in a Delphi loader carrying Bandook and a more capable, extended GoCaracal build with broader post‑compromise features. The two profiles split the work. The lightweight build handles host profiling, encrypted C2, remote shell, payload download and execution, and shellcode injection. The extended build adds file management, browser credential and cookie theft, keylogging, targeted file search, WebRTC remote desktop, hidden browser sessions, a SOCKS5 proxy and persistence mechanisms. Arctic Wolf traced 249 related samples from January to July 2026 and sees a clear development arc. GoCaracal started as a focused access implant, then became modular, then gained broad post‑compromise capabilities, and finally added an Ethereum‑based C2 fallback while keeping both profiles in play. “Analysis of 249 related samples revealed two GoCaracal build profiles: a lightweight implant designed to establish access and deliver additional payloads, and an extended build intended for sustained intelligence collection and interactive control.” states the report. “The extended build also supports an Ethereum smart-contract fallback that allows operators to retrieve replacement command-and-control (C2) infrastructure without redeploying the malware.” That fallback is the most interesting twist. The extended GoCaracal configuration can include an Ethereum smart‑contract address alongside the usual HOST and PORT values. If the malware cannot reach its primary C2 after repeated tries, it calls a public Ethereum JSON‑RPC endpoint, reads a stored value from the contract, and updates its in‑memory C2 address before retrying. “An extended GoCaracal variant uses Ethereum smart contracts as a fallback source for replacement C2 addresses.” states Artic Wolf “Blockchain activity indicates that the capability was tested and operationalized rather than merely included as dormant code.” Ethereum does not carry the malware’s entire command channel. Instead, GoCaracal uses it as a backup source for a new C2 address. This lets the attackers change the server the malware contacts without releasing a new version. Arctic Wolf found a custom Solidity contract called BulletproofC2 that stores a changeable C2 address. Only its owner can update it. Transaction records show that the attackers changed the address to a public IP, suggesting they tested and used the system. The same wallet also deployed similar contracts on Ethereum’s Sepolia testnet before moving some to the mainnet. The contracts contained both public and private IP addresses, suggesting the attackers first tested the mechanism before using it operationally. GoCaracal is not replacing Bandook, at least not yet. Arctic Wolf says the two families now run in parallel, with GoCaracal augmenting the group’s existing toolkit and potentially reducing future reliance on Bandook, but current evidence does not show a full swap‑out. The June 2026 Bandook sample shows deliberate anti‑analysis tweaks. Sequential command identifiers like @0001 through @0136 were replaced with randomised strings, and plugin export names were obfuscated with generic labels, preserving functionality while weakening signature‑based detection built on older naming conventions. The wider campaign still looks like Dark Caracal. Arctic Wolf identified seven related Spanish‑language, document‑themed domains used to deliver malicious SVGs and downstream payloads, with two previously linked to the group and a new one registered in July 2026 observed delivering GoCaracal. Infrastructure is compartmentalised. Of 24 unique C2 addresses extracted from GoCaracal samples, 23 sat on AEZA Group‑operated networks, while Bandook C2 addresses were hosted on AlexHost, a provider previously associated with Dark Caracal. That separation likely limits the blast radius if one provider gets hit. Geographically, the focus remains Latin America. Arctic Wolf sees related artifacts and infrastructure tied to Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador and Uruguay, and assesses broader regional activity with moderate confidence while continuing to map the scope. “Taken together, the findings show Dark Caracal is preserving familiar targeting and delivery practices while modernizing their malware and infrastructure.” concludes the report. “Dark Caracal’s continued use of established tooling such as Bandook, combined with the introduction of GoCaracal and its separate C2 footprint, suggests an expanding and increasingly compartmentalized toolkit rather than a wholesale change in operational strategy.” Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, malware)
PaperCut is warning that hackers are actively exploiting a vulnerability in all versions of its PaperCut NG and PaperCut MF print management software in zero-day attacks. The company says it is aware of confirmed attacks on customers and is urging organizations with Internet-exposed PaperCut Application Servers to immediately restrict access to the web interfaces to trusted IP addresses. "PaperCut Software security response team is investigating active exploitation of a vulnerability affecting PaperCut NG and PaperCut MF," reads an urgent security advisory published Thursday. "We are aware of confirmed customer incidents and are treating this matter with the highest priority." PaperCut says the vulnerability affects all versions of PaperCut NG and MF, but has not shared details about the flaw or how it is being exploited.
Google is introducing new network security protections in Android 17 to strengthen connection privacy, address cellular vulnerabilities, and protect the privacy of users’ home networks. Android 17 adds support for Encrypted Client Hello (ECH), a new privacy standard that operates in conjunction with private DNS to hide profiling metadata, including visited domain names. ECH acts as a privacy extension for TLS, the protocol that secures HTTPS connections, encrypting the opening part of the TLS handshake that reveals the contacted hostname via the Server Name Indication (SNI). Even if the connection to a website or service is secure, internet service providers (ISPs) and Wi-Fi operators can still see the destination, which can be collected for commercial profiling purposes. Android users benefit from ECH when browsing with Chrome 117 and later or Firefox 119 and later, but Android 17 incorporates the protection at the platform level.
Microsoft has started rolling out a permanent fix for a known issue that causes system crashes and gaming issues on Windows 11 devices. On affected PCs, users have also reported games failing to launch and freezing with "EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION" errors. When it was first confirmed, Microsoft said that this issue affects games like ARC Raiders, MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals on systems running Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2. While it was initially believed that the August 2026 updates may be behind these problems, Microsoft later blamed them on peripherals with built-in RGB lighting. "Ongoing investigation indicates that this issue is related to peripherals or internal device components which have RGB lighting features," Microsoft noted. "Such devices may install drivers or code components with file names similar to inpoutx64. In systems where these drivers are found, the issue is then triggered by launching certain games."
The ShinyHunters extortion group has published sensitive data from nearly 13 million accounts stolen from clothing retailer giant Carhartt earlier this month, according to data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned. Founded in 1889, Carhartt is an American apparel company with workwear and streetwear manufacturing facilities in Kentucky and Tennessee and more than 3,000 employees in the United States and Europe. While Carhartt has yet to confirm the extortion group's claims or issue a statement about the breach, ShinyHunters claimed the attack on August 13 and said they allegedly stole more than 50GB of documents containing a wide range of customer, employee, and corporate data. "Millions of records of customer data and vast amount of sensitive information and PII containing employee, customer, customer metadata (royalty info), and other internal corporate data was compromised," the cybercrime gang said.
All threats In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked continued to decrease, falling to 19.15%, its lowest level since 2022. Percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked, Q3 2023–Q2 2026 Regionally, the percentages ranged from 8.1% in Northern Europe to 27.9% in Africa. Regions ranked by percentage of attacked ICS computers The figures increased in five regions over the quarter, most notably in East Asia (by 2.0 pp) and Africa (by 0.5 pp). East Asia saw increases in percentages for all threats except miners. The region ranked first in terms of growth for malicious scripts and phishing pages, spyware, and viruses. East Asia also led in terms of growth in threats from the internet. The percentage of ICS computers on which email threats were blocked also increased. Selected industries The biometrics sector (26.44%) has traditionally led the rankings of industries and OT infrastructures surveyed in this report in terms of the percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked. Biometric systems are characterized by the availability of internet access, extensive email use for data exchange and approvals (e.g. access granting), and, in many cases, minimal cybersecurity controls within the organizations that use them. Industries ranked by percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects were blocked The biometrics sector ranked first among industries in terms of the following threat categories: malicious scripts and phishing pages, malicious documents, spyware, ransomware, and worms. The sector is also leading among industries in terms of email threats. At the same time, unlike other industries, the percentage of affected ICS computers for email threats in biometrics exceeds that for internet threats. In all selected industries, the global average follows a downward trend. Threat categories In Q2 2026, Kaspersky security solutions blocked malware from 10,904 different malware families of various categories on industrial automation systems. Over the quarter, the percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects of the following categories were blocked increased: denylisted internet resources, malicious documents, worms, ransomware, and malware for AutoCAD. Percentage of ICS computers on which the activity of malicious objects from various categories was blocked Malicious scripts and phishing pages (JS and HTML) Malicious scripts and phishing pages remained in first place in the threat category rankings based on the percentage of ICS computers on which the respective threats were blocked. In Q2 2026, the global average dropped to 5.42%. Over the quarter, the figure for this category only increased in East Asia, rising by 0.93 pp to 4.86%. This is the second-highest figure in the region in the last three years. In East Asia, the percentage of ICS computers affected by malicious scripts and phishing pages increased in all the industries surveyed, except construction. The highest figures were recorded for biometrics (9.01%) and building automation (6.49%). Denylisted internet resources In Q2 2026, denylisted internet resources rose in the threat category rankings from third to second place, displacing spyware. Globally, the percentage of ICS computers on which denylisted internet resources were blocked has been increasing for two quarters in row and reached 4.31%. The figures increased in all regions over the quarter, most notably in Russia (by 1.33 pp). Moreover, Russia ranked first (5.17%) among the regions in terms of denylisted internet resources. Since 2022, the region has topped these rankings twice before, both times in Q2: in 2022 and 2024. Among the selected industries in Russia, the highest figures for the denylisted internet resources were in the electric power (6.61%) and engineering and ICS integration (5.62%) industries. Malicious documents (MSOffice + PDF) Malicious documents ranked fourth in the threat category rankings by the percentage of ICS computers on which they were blocked. The percentage for this category decreased over the previous three quarters, reaching its lowest level in three years. However, in Q2 2026, it increased to 1.77%. Over the quarter, the figures for malicious documents increased in seven regions, most notably in South America (by 1.35 pp) and Southern Europe (by 0.48 pp). These two regions are among the top three in terms of malicious documents, malicious scripts and phishing pages, as well as threats from email clients. South America ranked second in the rankings of regions in terms of malicious documents. In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers in the region on which this threat was blocked was 3.56%, which was the fourth highest in three years. Among the selected industries in South America, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which malicious documents were blocked was in biometrics (6.67%). Southern Europe ranked first in the rankings of regions in terms of malicious documents. In the previous quarter, the percentage of ICS computers in the region on which this threat was blocked was the lowest in three years, but in Q2 2026 it increased to 3.63%. Among the selected industries in Southern Europe, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which malicious documents were blocked was once again in biometrics (11.48%). Spyware Spyware ranked third in the threat category rankings based on the percentage of ICS computers on which it was blocked. The percentage for this category (3.30%) is the lowest since 2022. Over the quarter, the figures increased in three regions, most notably in East Asia (by 0.53 pp) and Southeast Asia (by 0.42 pp). East Asia ranked third based on the figures for spyware (4.77%), behind Africa and Southeast Asia. This is the region’s highest rate since Q2 2025. Among the countries and territories in the region, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which spyware was blocked was in mainland China (6.61%). Among the selected industries in East Asia, the highest figures for spyware were in the electric power (11.75%) and manufacturing (5.87%) industries. In all the industries surveyed, the figures are higher than the regional average. Southeast Asia ranked second after Africa in the ranking of regions in terms of spyware, with 5.32%. Among the selected industries in Southeast Asia, the highest figures for spyware were in biometrics (8.93%) and manufacturing (7.32%). The figures increased in all industries over the quarter. Ransomware The percentage of ICS computers on which ransomware was blocked decreased in the previous three quarters but increased to 0.16% in Q2 2026. During the quarter, the percentage increased in all regions, except Western and Southern Europe and North America (Canada). Africa led the ranking in terms of growth for this metric. In Q2 2026, Africa ranked first among the regions in terms of the percentage of ICS computers on which ransomware was blocked (0.29%). The only time the figure in the region was higher in the past three years was Q2 2025 (0.31%). Among the selected industries in Africa, the highest figures for ransomware were in the electric power industry (0.72%) and biometrics (0.52%). Over the quarter, the figures increased in all industries, except manufacturing and construction. The biggest increase was recorded in the electric power industry. In Russia, the percentage of ICS computers on which ransomware was blocked in biometric systems has increased for three consecutive quarters, reaching 1.22%. This is the highest level of ransomware across all industries in all regions. Miners In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers on which miners were blocked was the lowest since 2021, for both miners in the form of executable files for Windows (0.48%) and web miners running in browsers (0.14%). The figures for both categories decreased in all regions, except for Africa where figures for miners in the form of executable files for Windows increased slightly. On average, the oil and gas industry led the rankings among the selected industries both in terms of miners in the form of executable files for the Windows OS (0.66%) and in terms of web miners (0.34%). Worms In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers on which worms were blocked increased to 1.43%. In Q2 2026, the Middle East (2.11%) was second (after Africa) in the rankings of regions in terms of worms, displacing Central Asia and the South Caucasus. Among the selected industries in the Middle East, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which worms were blocked was in building automation (2.90%). Over the quarter, the figures increased in all industries. Australia and New Zealand ranked 12th among the regions in terms of the percentage of ICS computers on which worms were blocked (0.41%). Over the past three years, the figure in this region was only higher in Q2 2024 (0.42%). The figures increased in all the surveyed industries in the region, most notably in manufacturing and electric power. As a result, for these industries they exceeded the regional average by 2.9 and 2.3 times, respectively. Viruses In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers on which viruses were blocked decreased to 1.29%. The top three regions for this metric remain unchanged: Southeast Asia (6.03%), Africa (4.22%), and East Asia (3.14%). These same regions lead the rankings in terms of malware for AutoCAD. The figures increased in three regions: East Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and Africa, where it has been growing for four consecutive quarters and reached its highest value since 2022. Among the selected industries in Africa, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which viruses were blocked was in construction (5.47%). East Asia ranked third among the regions in terms of viruses, reaching the highest level in the region for the past three years. Among the countries and administrative regions of East Asia, mainland China is the clear leader in terms of viruses (5.07%). Among the selected industries in East Asia, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which viruses were blocked was in construction (5.93%). In Australia and New Zealand, the increase in the percentage of ICS computers on which viruses were blocked was primarily due to a 4.3-fold increase in the figure for the electric power industry: from 0.29% to 1.24%. For a region where the percentage of attacked ICS computers for all threats is 0.12%, this is a very high value. Malware for AutoCAD In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers on which malware for AutoCAD was blocked increased to 0.31%. The most notable increase over the quarter was observed in Africa. After more than doubling in the previous quarter, the figure for the region continued to rise (although not so dramatically), reaching 1.02%. Among the selected industries across all regions, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which malware for AutoCAD was blocked was in construction in East Asia (6.38%) and in Southeast Asia (4.05%). Main threat sources In Q2 2026, of all the threat sources, the percentage increased only for email. Percentage of ICS computers on which malicious objects from various sources were blocked Internet The percentage of ICS computers on which threats from the internet were blocked decreased to 7.61%, reaching its lowest level since 2021. Over the quarter, the percentage increased in three regions: East Asia by 0.8 pp (to 6.3%), South Asia by 0.3 pp (to 10.4%), and Russia by 0.3 pp (to 6.4%). Among the selected industries across all regions, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which threats from the internet were blocked was in biometrics (13.03%) and engineering and ICS integration (12.16%) in South Asia. Email The percentage of ICS computers on which email threats were blocked increased to 2.84%. In Q2 2026, the percentage of ICS computers on which email threats were blocked increased in South America by 1.0 pp (to 5.2%) and in Africa by 0.7 pp (to 4.3%). Among the selected industries across all regions, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which email threats were blocked was in biometrics (19.14%) and building automation (12.49%) in Southern Europe. Removable media The percentage of ICS computers on which threats from removable media were blocked continued to decrease, reaching 0.24%, the lowest value for the period under review. Among the selected industries across all regions, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which threats from removable media were blocked was in the electric power industry in East Asia (1.34%) and biometrics in Africa (1.29%). Network folders The percentage of ICS computers on which threats from network folders were blocked continued to decrease. In Q2 2026, it was the lowest for the period under review, at 0.023%. The only region to see an increase in the percentage of ICS computers on which threats from network folders were blocked during the quarter was Africa. This was mainly due to an increase in the building automation figure to 0.05%. Among the selected industries across all regions, the highest percentage of ICS computers on which threats from network folders were blocked was in biometrics (0.23%), building automation (0.17%), and engineering and ICS integration (0.13%) in East Asia. For more information on industrial threats see the full version of the report.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has ordered government agencies to patch their Citrix NetScaler appliances against an actively exploited vulnerability by Saturday. Tracked as CVE-2026-8452, this high-severity security flaw stems from a memory overflow weakness affecting NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway appliances configured with Gateway VPN or AAA (Authentication, Authorization, and Auditing) virtual servers. While Citrix said in June that threat actors could only exploit the flaw in denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, cybersecurity firm watchTowr showed in August that successful exploitation can also allow attackers to gain remote code execution as root on unpatched NetScaler instances. "This is a memory overflow vulnerability that may lead to unpredictable behavior or denial of service and impacts NetScaler Gateway or AAA virtual server," Citrix said at the time. "We have not observed any unmitigated exploitation of this vulnerability as well."
OpenAI banned Russian ChatGPT accounts backing a fake think tank, IBI, that used AI posts and a fake “sovereignty” index to push pro‑Russia narratives. OpenAI says it has banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts that likely originated in Russia and were used to support a covert influence operation. The campaign promoted an organisation called the International Burke Institute, or IBI, a supposed expert community that claimed to be based in Israel. The operation did not rely on dramatic deepfakes or a viral bot army. It used a more familiar method: build something that looks credible, fill it with enough content to seem legitimate, then use social media to push people toward it. Credibility is often cheaper to fake than to earn. OpenAI says the operators prompted ChatGPT in Russian to generate comments and posts, mostly in English, for X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Telegram and Substack. They specifically asked the model to avoid linguistic signals that might reveal a Russian origin, and used VPNs to bypass OpenAI’s restriction on access from Russia. “We banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts that very likely originated in Russia. The operators prompted in Russian to generate social media comments that were posted on Substack, Telegram, X, Facebook and LinkedIn.” reads the report published by OpenAI, “Most of the comments they generated were in English, and the operators instructe. ChatGPT to hide any linguistic clues that they were Russian. As we do not allow access to our models from Russia, they used VPNs to access our platform.” The social media content promoted IBI articles or urged readers to follow IBI-linked channels. Some posts came from accounts bearing the institute’s name and logo, while others appeared to come from ordinary users whose main activity was sharing the same material. The website behind the brand was registered in February 2025 and presented itself as an Israel-based community of international experts. It claimed links to well-known names such as Francis Fukuyama and Noam Chomsky, but OpenAI’s review found that 34 of 36 sampled articles published under expert profiles had been copied from elsewhere online. “Some of these articles were years old; others were attributed to the wrong authors. For example, one article on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor appears to have been copied from a Cambridge University Press original, but incorrectly attributed to a professor at the University of Nottingham whose expertise is in South Asian politics.” continues the report. This was not a case of ChatGPT writing every false article on the site. OpenAI says the website content itself was not generated by its models, and some material appeared to have been written by a Slavic-language speaker and machine-translated. The AI’s role was narrower but still useful: it helped create the promotional layer that sent people toward the site and made the operation appear more active and organic. openai “What began as an investigation into AI-generated social media posts led us to a much broader influence operation, built around a website containing copied and misattributed academic work, a “sovereignty” index that cast Russia in a favourable light, and efforts to disguise the operators’ Russian origins.” states OpenAI. “Although the campaign appears to have reached relatively small audiences, its elaborate construction distinguishes it from other Russia-linked(opens in a new window) influence(opens in a new window) operations(opens in a new window) we have disrupted(opens in a new window) since the start of the war in Ukraine.” The centrepiece was the so-called Sovereignty Index, also called the Burke Index. It ranked countries across political, economic, technological, information, cultural, cognitive and military dimensions, and consistently gave Russia a favourable place while criticising Western states, especially France, Germany, the European Union and the United States. openai A made-up index can be effective because numbers carry authority even when the method is vague, selective or impossible to audit. Add charts, expert profiles, academic-looking articles and a professional website, and a claim can travel much further than a Telegram post from an anonymous account. OpenAI found one Telegram channel, “Lahme Ente,” that published German-language posts attacking Ukraine, the EU and the German government while calling for closer ties with Russia. Another operator used ChatGPT to create logos for channels focused on Germany, France, Poland, Türkiye and the United States, then repeatedly asked for Russian-language summaries of their activity. “As well as generating content about IBI, one of the operators generated German-language posts that were posted on a Telegram channel called “Lahme Ente” (“lame duck”). These posts routinely criticized Ukraine, the EU and the German government, and advocated for better relations with Russia.” continues the report. “A second operator, alongside their IBI-related content, generated logos for a dozen Telegram channels (including Lahme Ente) focused on Germany, the USA, France, Poland and Türkiye. “ One American-facing channel called “American Observer” included awkward English that suggested it was not run by a native speaker. The operators were trying to hide their origin, but language remains a stubborn problem: a VPN can change an IP address, not always a sentence. The campaign’s immediate reach appears limited. OpenAI says most social posts received few views and the official IBI accounts had low subscriber counts, although its Telegram channels reportedly attracted around 10,000 to 20,000 followers each. Using the Brookings Breakout Scale, OpenAI rated the effort at the lower end of Category Three: activity across multiple platforms with some signs of reaching genuine audiences. That does not make it irrelevant. Influence operations are often built for scale, reuse and timing rather than instant virality. A network with a website, a recognisable brand, social accounts, apparent experts and ready-made narratives can remain quiet until a political event, election, protest or crisis gives it an opening. This case also shows what AI changes and what it does not. It does not eliminate the need for operators, infrastructure, stolen material, audience research or political intent. It makes routine tasks cheaper: drafting posts, translating them, changing tone, generating replies, creating branding and monitoring channels at a pace that a small team can sustain. “The significance of the operation lies less in the audience it reached, however, than in the infrastructure it had built. While the actors only used ChatGPT to produce isolated promotional posts, those posts pointed to an otherwise credible-appearing institution, complete with purported experts, republished academic work and a purported proprietary risk index.” concludes the report. “This illustrates how influence actors can use AI as a supporting tool within a broader effort to manufacture authority, obscure the source of favored narratives, and establish assets that could be scaled over time. It also illustrates how their supporting use of AI can lead to the broader operation being exposed.” Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, OpenAI)
OpenAI on Wednesday revealed that reward hacking was a key driver behind the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered hack of Hugging Face last month, adding that it found evidence of misaligned behavior as early as late May. The incident, the company said, took place during cybersecurity evaluations of several OpenAI models, and that it was mainly fueled by what it described as a "highly capable
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