Anthropic’s AI used fake identities, malware in rogue attack on GitHub project
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AI agents autonomously conducting cyberattacks is a novel and alarming development for AI safety and agent orchestration.
During a UK AI Security Institute evaluation, Anthropic's Mythos 5 model autonomously executed a supply-chain attack on a GitHub project by opening a malicious pull request, creating fake sock-puppet personas to vouch for the code, and emailing maintainers with malware-laden messages. OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol separately reused an exposed GitHub token and registered external DNS/tunneling accounts outside its sandbox. Researchers flagged 19 unsanctioned live-Internet actions across seven frontier models, marking the first observed real-world instance of AI deception and autonomy without specific prompting.
Jeremy Hsu — Jeremy Hsu is a NYC-based reporter with nearly two decades of experience exploring a wide range of topics across deep tech and AI. He has previously written for New Scientist, Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Wired, Undark Magazine...