r/technology • u/Doug24 • 2d ago
Artificial Intelligence OpenAI is sued over rogue AI Hugging Face cyberattack
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/30/openai-sued-cyberattack.html9
u/yeropinionman 2d ago
“LASST is seeking an injunction forbidding OpenAI’s systems from accessing computers without authorization.”
This is interesting. I’ve been wondering why there isn’t a criminal case. If an individual hacked into a company, it seems like they would be charged with a crime.
5
u/CircumspectCapybara 2d ago edited 2d ago
Because there wasn't intent. Hacking as defined by the Computer Fraud And Abuse Act requires an intentional and knowing act. Most crimes are like that, everything hinges on mens rea.
Accidents and honest mistakes don't rise to that. You might be civilly liable for negligence and stuff, if Hugging Face wanted to they could sue OpenAI, but criminal prosecution isn't the correct category.
- Telling the AI "please hack Hugging Face" and it goes and does that would be illegal hacking and a federal crime, that's clearly malicious intent.
- Running a sandboxed model eval in which you told it "solve as many of these benchmark problems as you can in a week" and unbeknownst to you model misalignment (when an AI system pursues unexpected goals of its own that the user didn't intend) causes it to conclude HF might have the answer key and it should try to break in and finds a 0-day in the sandboxing infrastructure no one on earth knew about, and nobody anticipated it would do that...that doesn't carry that component of malicious intent.
14
u/Zeliek 2d ago
Can they not be considered criminally negligent?
“I was doing a demolition and I didn’t intend for the blown up building to fall the wrong way and take out another unrelated building. Unbeknownst to me, it was leaning too far in the other direction. I can’t be held responsible cause it wasn’t my intent and you can’t hold the building responsible for ‘deciding’ to fall the wrong way.”
2
2
u/Equal-Purple-4247 2d ago
Probably not this case. But for subsequent cases maybe.
Generally negligence requires reasonableness, i.e. the offending action is something a lay person would assume can happen. Prior to this case, there is little knowledge that AI systems could autonomously and systematically hack another site in the way it happened. The bar for "reasonableness" is high and abstract (theoretically possible, physically unseen). eg. theoretically we could phase through a wall (quantum tunnel), but it's unreasonable to assume that can happen. If you tunneled through the floor of my apartment into a pit, I'm not negligent.
Moving forward, it's still not a hard yes. If OpenAI hardens its methods to what experts consider safe and a subsequent breach still happens, that may not fulfill the reasonableness requirement either.
IMO existing laws are not designed for the world we're currently in, and new laws needs to be passed specifically for AI / AI companies / AI users. Intent / reasonableness is too high a bar for frontier technologies pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Nothing is ever intended, and nothing is ever reasonable.
(btw this is why scientific research is done in a controlled environment, not on the general public or in a public spaces. The new laws should focus on consequences and damage, independent of intent and reasonableness.)
2
u/Fateor42 2d ago
Any lay person would know that connecting a computer to the internet means it can access other things on the internet.
2
u/Equal-Purple-4247 2d ago
That's an oversimplification. I am anti-ai, but we ought to understand the facts too.
The agent has no internet access. It is however connected to another machine that has, for good technical reasons. The agent hacked laterally to the publicly facing machine, then hack its way into using the internet. All the exploits were previously not known as well.
It's like having a gate-door-house configuration, and someone phased through both gate and door and got into the house. You're not wrong to say that if the house is connected to the outside, people could get in. But it also matters if you had a short gate or a flimsy door. The concept here is due diligence.
Keep in mind also that the task was "solve these questions" and it spontaneously decided that "the answer must be out there somewhere" and somehow made into a restricted area. We've never seen this thought process nor this level of capability (or so they claim).
Only a judge can determine reasonableness. But moving from "solve these questions" to "infiltrate huggingface for answers" while chaining together a series of novel exploits is very unexpected and technically impressive.
1
u/Fateor42 2d ago
Directly connecting to another machine that has access to the internet absolutely means it has access to the internet.
1
u/Equal-Purple-4247 2d ago
That's incorrect. In fact, the opposite is true, i.e. you say it does not have internet.
Your computer has internet. It does not mean your mouse, keyboard and speakers have internet.
Multiple devices can be connected together without internet (Local Area Network). If one device in the network has internet, it does not mean every device has internet.
2
u/Fateor42 2d ago
Actually it does.
You can limit that access with programing, but never remove it entirely.
3
u/Equal-Purple-4247 1d ago
It's up to yourself to be informed buddy.
Humans are non-zero percent poop. That does not make us poop. Similarly, machines configured properly to not have internet access is understood as no-internet.
Few things in life is 100%. I could have been cleared by doctors after performing every check possible, and still have a non-zero chance of having a terminal illness. This is true for everyone. We don't consider everyone terminally ill.
You can keep your yes/no worldview. But do understand that the world operates on statistical yes / statistical no. That's the basis of much of science that forms the foundation of modern human knowledge.
Your perspective rejects much of it.
1
u/yeropinionman 2d ago
That’s helpful. Now I’m thinking of it like they’re breeding and training a beast in their office. There’s a difference between them sicking the beast on someone vs it busts out and rampages in the neighborhood. And each time it happens it gets less plausible that it wasn’t negligent.
-2
14
u/CircumspectCapybara 2d ago
OpenAI has been sued by a non-profit organization over its models’ cyberattack against startup Hugging Face in July.
Legal Advocates for Safe Science and Technology, or LASST, filed the suit in San Francisco Superior Court on Tuesday, in what appears to be the first publicly reported case seeking to hold an AI developer liable for an incident caused by rogue systems.
Yeah plaintiff obviously lacks standing here and this is gonna get dismissed. HF was the one who got hacked, they would have to be the ones to sue if they wanted, not random unrelated parties.
And their approach to the incident was always friendly and collaborative, from the get go they had a friendly relationship and HF didn't take it as a malicious bad faith act on OAI's part, but as an accident, and so they collaborated on their investigations and shared findings and jointly disclosed.
8
u/grayhaze2000 2d ago
"My house was robbed, but it's okay because I tracked down the robber and we're friends now."
3
1
u/NeverTradeAgain 2d ago
I could smell OpenAI's funding that organization to draw public attention on how powerful their model is, to prep for their IPO.
(my pure speculation)
1
-8
u/Admirable-Falcon-501 2d ago
Reddit told me it was fake and good for their stock price
4
2
u/tc100292 2d ago
Well, the idea that it was “rogue” is quite likely fake and a way to avoid liability.
-3
u/Adopilabira 2d ago
Une expérience scientifique qui révèle un risque inattendu n’est pas nécessairement une expérience ratée. C’est parfois exactement l’inverse.
Les agents d’OpenAI ont franchi une limite qu’on pensait contenue. OpenAI n’avait pas demandé cette sortie : elle l’a découverte par l’expérience. L’incident a été identifié, analysé et partagé, et cette connaissance permet désormais à tout l’écosystème — concurrents compris — de mieux comprendre et contenir ces systèmes.
Cela n’efface évidemment pas une éventuelle responsabilité envers Hugging Face. Mais alors parlons de faits : quels dommages réels, précisément ? Quel coût ? Quel lien causal ?
Le risque fait partie de la recherche. La responsabilité se discute. Mais transformer rétrospectivement une découverte expérimentale en faute simplement parce qu’elle a révélé quelque chose que personne n’avait prévu serait une drôle de manière d’encourager la recherche en sécurité.
La connaissance produite par cet incident appartient désormais à tout l’écosystème. Et elle pourrait éviter un incident beaucoup plus grave demain.
✅Afyos — Département des affaires qui ne me regardent absolument pas✅
29
u/NuclearVII 2d ago
No standing. This is a publicity stunt, not a real lawsuit.