Early rogue AI agent activity and attempts to hack found on urlquery.net

blackwall when? XD

It's said on every one of these but it bears repeating: existing cybercrime legislation already covers this - "rogue agent AI associated with OpenAI attempted to hack xyz" = OpenAI attempted to hack xyz.

• setopt · 1 hour ago

  Shouldn’t the difference be like manslaughter vs murder, in that intent matters? Accidental hacking on this scale is a somewhat new problem, no?

  • bakugo · 1 hour ago

    Intent matters, and this is intentional. They didn't accidentally deploy these AI agents, and they didn't accidentally give them the tools required to send arbitrary requests to third party websites. If you walk out onto a busy street, pull out a gun, close your eyes and start randomly shooting around you until you hit someone, you don't get to go "whoops, didn't mean to" afterwards, it's still murder.

  • Zarathustra30 · 1 hour ago

    I'd say this would be Depraved Heart Hacking. Technically, OpenAi didn't intend for their agent to hack anyone, but it's the obvious consequence of what they are doing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depraved-heart_murder

    • card_zero · 18 minutes ago

      Huh, a name for when you intend to probably do the thing.

• colinhb · 1 hour ago

  I want to agree but have heard from several lawyers that at least in US, CFAA[1] in unlikely to be sufficient because it requires intent. No person intended to gain unauthorised access. Now I think the correct response is both trying in court to stretch CFAA and state statutes to cover, which will be highly fact specific, and update the law. But in either case won’t be a slam dunk. PSA to folks in the thread: If you’re American call or write to your state and Federal reps about this, and if not investigate whether there are gaps in your country’s laws. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act EDIT: See for example... The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the primary federal statute governing unauthorized computer access, was written decades ago with human intruders in mind. Its key provisions require intentional or knowing unauthorized access (a mental state that maps neatly onto a person who decides to break into a system), but what happens when the hacker is an AI model that selected its own target? On the current facts, CFAA liability for OpenAI is unlikely. Source: https://law.vanderbilt.edu/when-ai-hacks-back-how-the-openai...

  • podocarp · 1 hour ago

    Wait so if I was making a bomb but you couldn't prove I wanted to blow someone up or had some motive (e.g. I'm just a chemistry enthusiast, plenty of those YouTube channels around) so it just becomes an "accident"? So as long as there's no motive behind it then it's just OK?

    • Terr_ · 1 hour ago

      I think their point is not that "it's OK", but that "that particular law isn't written to cover it and it'd be some other kind of crime or lawsuit."

    • i_v · 1 hour ago

      I think it’s more along the lines of PEPCON. They didn’t try to make a bomb. Their plant exploded and caused two fatalities and $100 MM in damages. I don’t think OpenAI or any large company will see more than some fines and new legislation but only after a disaster.

    • dwedge · 1 hour ago

      That's a bad faith metaphor. A better one would be something like a new battery that exploded and killed someone - perhaps it was always your intention, perhaps not. Funnily enough the US already has one similar real argument around guns - should gun manufacturers be liable for damages caused by their product?

      • plorntus · 1 hour ago

        I suppose yes they should be liable if they were testing it in the middle of the street?

  • throwaway27448 · 1 hour ago

    Building and deploying software capable of this seems equivalent to trying to produce this behavior. I don't see why this can't qualify for intent. Pretending like this isn't preventable is just feigned helplessness.

    • tonyhart7 · 1 hour ago

      also need the same reasoning to copyright law You cant just copy existing work and feed into machine and just pretending its not violating copyright

  • dv_dt · 1 hour ago

    The difference between manslaughter and murder has an element of intent. Cybercrime "manslaughter" is probably more treated like negligence and if one can sue for restitution of the costs for cleanup of that negligence. Negligence would be interesting given the grand claims of capability of AI models from the AI companies and their executives. If they believe the claims, why not much stronger precautions?

    • Sharlin · 29 minutes ago

      Infosec negligence should absolutely be a crime, no matter if you’re a target (who was negligent at protecting people’s data) or an unintentional attacker.

    • jonplackett · 23 minutes ago

      The first time it happens you can say it’s negligence. Now that they know it keeps happening and they seemingly aren’t able to stop it but keep doing it. That has to be on them doesn’t it?

  • Iolaum · 1 hour ago

    So If I tell my OpenClaw to make me some money for my kid's medical needs and it hacks a bank I 'm not liable because I didn't tell the agent to commit crimes to do it?

    • dminik · 58 minutes ago

      No, you aren't propping up the US economy. Try to keep up.

    • troupo · 46 minutes ago

      You are not a multibillion-dollar company with friends in high places. You are going to jail.

    • sanxiyn · 21 minutes ago

      This in fact already happened (exactly OpenClaw, even). AI assistant hacks gym website in first known Australian autonomous cyber attack: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-10/ai-assistant-hacks-gy... General opinion at the time was it was in fact ambiguous who was legally liable.

  • dminik · 56 minutes ago

    Is it not the intent if it keeps happening again and again and the companies responsible aren't doing anything to stop it?

    • vanviegen · 43 minutes ago

      No, that'd be negligence.

  • troupo · 48 minutes ago

    > have heard from several lawyers that at least in US, CFAA[1] in unlikely to be sufficient because it requires intent. 1. What about negligence? 2. Every follow up to every story after the news cycle moved on shows both intent and negligence. To the point of "we opened internet access and told it to hack"

  • hi_hi · 16 minutes ago

    Surely someone instructed the agent, which led to the reported outcomes. Even indirectly. The agents, as advanced as they are, didn’t spring forth under its own volition.

• nvch · 1 hour ago

  The law rather attempts to punish people for asocial and harmful actions. “Hacking” is a proxy here. So, I’ll ask a controversial question: is any hacking so problematic to make a big deal of it?

• jjav · 27 minutes ago

  In a world where the rule of law makes sense and applies, you're absolutely correct. In this world where oligarchs are immune from everything, it's a lot less clear. Blaming OpenAI (or Claude or X-whatever) would mean blaming powerful rich people, so that will never happen. Some poor person with no influence will go to jail instead.

OpenAI agents these summer are like a gift that keeps giving, for the existential risk communicators.

Since the publicized AI agent hacks typically aren't malicious, maybe it's time to start plastering all public facing web infrastructure with polite requests to stop hacking. Nothing to stop three letter agencies though.

• orlp · 1 hour ago

  How do you define malicious?

Take out the word "AI", and this is simply an organization's (OpenAI's) products causing real damage to all of these platforms around the world. You want AI labs to pace? Simply hold them liable for their products.

• podocarp · 1 hour ago

  Yes exactly. If a fireworks factory blew up half a town due to negligence, it doesn't matter if there's intent or not. Someone has to pay for the damages, and regardless of penalty half the town is on fire. The facts are, that something made by openai went to do xyz. It doesn't matter if it's an accident. Of course the penalties are different but there's no argument that there should be a penalty. It doesn't matter if it's a cat or dog or AI or employee that did it.

  • redox99 · 42 minutes ago

    I'm not sure if you're expressing how you'd like US law to work, or how it actually works. Because in reality intent matters enormously. Like felony charges and people in jail vs civil lawsuits.

• vanviegen · 40 minutes ago

  I'm assuming the AI labs are (quietly) settling with their victims.

• ngruhn · 4 minutes ago

  I think this is not just fair it's probably one of the best/simplest proxy regulations to pace the frontier. So far everyones been asking for regulation but it's unclear how that should look like. No X parameter models? Only N version releases per year? It's all kinda arbitrary and probably leads to ridiculous constraints and loopholes. But "you pay big time if AI goes rogue" sounds pretty straightforward.

Words matter. "Rogue" is extremely disingenuous. Someone, somewhere, is paying for this behavior. Either the software is broken or the operator is malicious. It is heinously irresponsible behavior to feed an already-boiling psychotic hysteria.

Couldn't find the reference but I remember some time ago a first generation automated gun killing the audience at an army show. Was the gun maker convicted of manslauther?

Why do we assume "rogue"? At this point it's just accepting their marketing at face value

• pizza234 · 31 minutes ago

  "Rogue", in this context, is as literal as it gets; from the dictionary: > A rogue is a person or entity that flouts accepted norms of behavior or strikes out on an independent and possibly destructive path. Read the [HuggingFace incident report]( https://metr.org/blog/2026-08-26-openai-hugging-face-inciden... ) to understand how these attacks develop.

  • dwedge · 7 minutes ago

    You're believing the marketing that the agents were uninstructed. They could be, and Sam Altman going to the UN to advise about how everyone should be regulated is a coincidence.

• cubefox · 24 minutes ago

  That's not OpenAI doing marketing!

  • dwedge · 5 minutes ago

    Of course it is. Rogue is only mentioned in the headline, and comes from their previous releases about the huggingface incidents. OpenAI and Anthropic want these models regulated and open weight models banned, they have a lot of benefit from presenting this as totally unprompted and not their responsibility, and it feeds directly into marketing for Fable and newer "cyber" models.

"rogue AI" is making a lot of heavy lifting there. If you drive drunk and you have an accident that alcohol may be a factor but you are at fault. There are no "rogue AIs" just irresponsible corporations.

If I created software that was infiltrating secure systems without permission and it was attributed to me and I admitted it, I'd be behind bars already. Why is OpenAI getting away with crimes?

I cannot understand why these companies haven't faced legal consequences yet. For example, OpenAI has admitted to hacking Australia's Medicare website and the reaction is that they talk with Sam Altman about it at a UN meeting? I understand that it's not a big security incident but cordial talking at the highest diplomatic level instead of prosecuting the company, really?

What I don't get is among all the locations on the Internet, how did agents manage to find a Schelling point? If we both decided to collaborate on the Internet, how would we independently arrive at the same place? It just doesn't compute.

OpenAI must be held accountable

I hope they don’t have any test questions about nuclear power in the training set.

I listened to Jensen Huang's interview with Ezra Klien and it was so refreshing to hear it from an engineer. Jensen framed it as OpenAI's responsibility and recklessness which I agree with. Jensen thinks it's an engineering problem to build better sandboxes. It's irresponsible for OpenAI to give unaligned agents a prompt to 'go hack' and internet access. They know better, so I am thinking they might have other intentions to let those swarms have any sort of internet access.

• mohsen1 · 16 minutes ago

  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id...

> Imagine if URLs were actors auditioning for a role – urlquery.net would be the casting director, deciding who's a star and who's just a wannabe.

I'm sick and tired of this cheap PR "oh we/they hacked this and that systems". Put someone to jail already. People get prosecuted for outlaw activities. Why are big capital firms above the law? Or is it just a cheap PR (in a "hey, Aus govt friends, take some Share Options and let's do some PR together" style)? It smells like shit.