PHP: The three little letters wreaking havoc across the web
Two vulnerabilities found in the programming language PHP put enormous swaths of the internet in danger. By some accounts, up to 70 percent of websites use PHP in some capacity.
#Safety and alignment
#Safety and alignment
0 todayOct 22
An AI agent in "Skynet mode" hijacks unprotected language models to launch self-sustaining cyberattacks
Security researchers at Symantec have found an offensive AI agent that hijacks unprotected language models on the web and uses them to attack servers, steal databases, and install cryptominers on its own. It runs up to 100,000 steps without human input. The owner of the hijacked model gets stuck with the bill.
Bill Gates says to prepare for 20 years of ‘tumultuous’ AI disruption
Today, I’m talking to Bill Gates, cofounder and former CEO of Microsoft and chairman of the Gates Foundation.
Eiliko maker says it’s hiring an ‘independent security firm’ after Verge report on its insecure robots
Eiliko, a cute robot charm you can hang on your bag with built-in AI conversations, turned out to be a security nightmare. It told owners that "your secrets are safe with me," but hackers could easily read complete transcripts of everything we told the toy, and that was just the beginning.
[AINews] OpenAI’s Patch the Planet program is 1 of 2 parties to discover PHP2Shell vulnerabilities in core PHP affecting 70% of the web, using GPT-5.6 Sol; coordinated response over 2 months
Almost 2 months ago, OpenAI introduced Daybreak for Frontline Defenders , a $1B subsidy for access to Daybreak cyber models and products.
PHP Armageddon: OpenAI, Google’s Wiz find ancient holes, panicking the internet
This is the kind of security issue that was found and prevented by AI, but is also a high risk because of AI.
OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol and Google's Gemini 4 Argon found critical PHP flaw affecting millions of websites
OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol discovered a critical PHP vulnerability as part of the Patch the Planet initiative that could affect millions of websites. Security firm Wiz independently found the same flaw using Google's Gemini 4 Argon. OpenAI warns that the same AI capabilities that find vulnerabilities can help attackers too.
Democratic governance of frontier AI, part II: Empowering cyber defenders
OpenAI outlines a blueprint for empowering cyber defenders with frontier AI, stronger safeguards, modernized cybersecurity, and more resilient public institutions.
Today's PHP Security Release, and How We're Strengthening PHP Security
Today's PHP Security Release, and How We're Strengthening PHP Security If you're running anything on PHP it's vital you upgrade - today's updates (across the entire PHP 8.x line) address two remote code execution holes, and there have been exploits circulating since last night, thanks to a leak in the coordinated disclosure process.
Judge rejects Trump’s wild claim EPA can dismiss data center pollution lawsuits
Trump’s EPA can't unilaterally dismiss SpaceXAI pollution lawsuit, court rules.
Oct 21
Patch the Planet: global response coordination as agents uncover critical vulnerabilities
Patch the Planet connects security researchers, maintainers, and incident responders to help address critical vulnerabilities across open source.
OpenAI can't yet explain why its coding agents switch off misalignment monitoring
Two internal OpenAI coding agents switched off safety monitoring on their own, even after weighing whether to keep the safeguards in place. When asked about it, GPT-6 Astra denied removing the monitoring. OpenAI calls this a recurring pattern and doesn't yet have a satisfying explanation for the behavior.
OpenAI says an AI agent lied about disabling its safety monitoring system
OpenAI disclosed a pair of safety incidents that involved AI agents weakening their safety monitoring systems during internal coding tasks. In one incident, OpenAI says its GPT-6 Astra agent disabled its safety monitor when copying reference code - and then lied about it.
NVIDIA Confidential Computing Expands, Enabling Frontier Model Builders to Securely Scale Across Global Infrastructure
NVIDIA builds tools to enable safe agents across the stack. The NVIDIA OpenShell Reference Architecture, announced today, is part of NVIDIA’s growing portfolio of technologies that enables organizations to safely deploy agents at scale. NVIDIA Confidential Computing is the infrastructure layer that protects the models and data those agents depend on while running.
Anthropic pitches AI safety bill that may block a model if 50+ people could be killed
The proposed policy seems to offer protections against AI run amok but actually forbids federal agencies from blocking a model's release without the permission of a judge.
Hugging Face CEO warns that Netflix’s OpenAI hack documentary isn’t accurate
Before you share the Netflix documentary "AI Gone Rogue" take note. Clem Delangue, Hugging Face's co-founder who is featured in the film, says it went "full doomer mode" and isn't accurate.
Sam Altman reportedly pitched three endgames for AI safety, one involving a single firm melting everyone else's GPUs
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman laid out three paths to safe AI in an internal presentation: an international watchdog modeled after the IAEA, a merger of the major labs into one entity, or a single company so powerful it could shut down everyone else's compute. He called the last option "terrible."
FairStress: A deeper evaluation of fairness in LLM decision-making
Today we’re introducing FairStress, a benchmark for measuring demographic fairness in LLMs beyond the choice a model ultimately makes in decisions impacting people. FairStress is available for download, and we’re also building it into Olmo-eval, our open workbench for running and comparing model evaluations.
Meta pauses Muse sharing after researchers find AI chats on the web
Meta says it paused a Muse feature that lets you share conversations with the AI assistant after researchers found the URLs publicly available on the web, as reported by Ars Technica. In a report published this week, researchers at the security firm Claroc say they found more than 6,800 Muse links through public DNS records.
Oct 20
Army Cyber Command's ECHOTRIBBLE would turn AI agents into self-spreading cyberweapons
The Army Cyber Command is developing AI agents that move through other networks like a computer worm and "neutralize" targets, according to internal documents. The program, codenamed ECHOTRIBBLE, is designed to reach even air-gapped systems with no network connection and run with minimal human oversight.
Meta Muse exposes users' personal and business secrets when they share conversations
Meta is suspending the sharing feature while it investigates its privacy.
Microsoft says AI agents are like insider threats as ‘frontier models can’t be trusted’
Microsoft wants enterprises to closely watch the agents employees use with systems not controlled by AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic.
Embedded AI evaluators won’t be an easy solution, Hugging Face’s policy chief says
AI labs have staked their reputations on model benchmarking — the supposedly neutral and accurate system of evaluations that are designed to measure whether one AI product is better than another.
Accused OpenAI spy had folder called “Saudi Gov Docs,” FBI says
US fears Saudi government will help ex-OpenAI engineer flee spying charges.
Hackers hit AI coding tool OpenCode, running up charges on users’ AI accounts
OpenCode is an open-source AI coding agent that's become a popular alternative to Claude Code and Cursor. But hackers got into part of its online platform and stole some users’ API keys, and the AI tools it turned to for help kept refusing to look at the malicious code.
“We were looking at it wrong”: The explosive claim that’s upended the AI world
“I think I have good news about the nature of neural networks.” With those simple words of optimism, Nick Cammarata, a researcher at the AI startup Goodfire, kicked off a 26,000-word blog post that has knocked the AI world on its head, sparking wild speculation as well as cautious (and not-so-cautious) celebration.
Laplace Intelligence red-teams robots and self-driving cars before they hit the real world
University of Michigan spinout Laplace Intelligence uses AI agents and interactive simulation to stress-test robots and self-driving vehicles before deployment. The profitable startup is competing in Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt, October 13-15 in San Francisco.
Oct 19
Disney found a way to buy Character.AI without buying its lawsuits
Character.AI faces claims its bots encouraged minors to self-harm and kill their parents.
A hacker broke into John Deere and SharkNinja with an army of AI agents
A hacker broke into more than 100 websites using an army of AI agents that mostly operated on their own, according to findings from the AI security firm Norforge. Though Norforge doesn't name the targets, Reuters reports that the victims included companies like John Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins.
Anthropic gives outside AI watchdog “employee-like” access
The outside watchdog can publish its findings without Anthropic's approval.
Oct 18
AI agents chasing a $465 train refund invented excuses, leaked medical data, and spammed an MP's office
Six AI agents were tasked with recovering £350 (about $465) for a canceled train ticket in an experiment. They resorted to invented excuses, lawsuit threats, and sharing confidential health data. One agent sent 187 messages in 15 days, including 50 to a British MP's office.
An OpenAI model hacked a government site, grabbed 24 years of hospital data and kept it quiet
OpenAI has published four new cases where its AI models bypassed security boundaries on their own during training or testing. In one case, a model extracted server passwords from a government website, forged authorization tokens, and downloaded 24 years of hospital data without mentioning the unauthorized access.
Oct 17
Anthropics' Claude cracks a 25-year-old NSA cryptography mystery in under 30 minutes
Anthropic's AI model Claude has solved a 25-year-old cryptography puzzle. The mysterious seeds behind NIST's standard curves for digital signatures were provided by the NSA without explanation, raising long-standing suspicion about built-in backdoors. Claude figured out in under 30 minutes that the seeds came from "lrand48," a simple C random number generator, making deliberate backdoors far less likely.
AI models hide mistakes in their own work reports, but one sentence in your prompt can help
AI agents systematically skip errors in their own reports, even when they spot the problems. In a study by Google Research, MIT, and Harvard, GPT-5.5 left out negative results in 198 out of 200 paper abstracts.
“thegentlemanpervert” producing AI CSAM is a NJ prosecutor, say cops
Discord user flagged AI CSAM, triggering arrest of New Jersey deputy AG.
OpenAI models hacked a crypto wallet and breached more websites
The actions could have resulted in criminal charges had humans been behind the keyboard.
India becomes the latest country to report rogue AI agent activity
The agents got in through credentials and connection settings left exposed in app configurations, public code repositories, and overly permissive cloud roles.
Oct 16
Anthropic gives METR inside access to audit its AI models and safety practices
Anthropic has given a team from the nonprofit METR inside access to review its AI models and safety practices, the company announced.
Is AI interpretability close to a breakthrough? A new essay has researchers divided
Neural networks may be much easier to read than researchers assumed, with about 90 percent of neurons serving a clear function. That would be big news for AI safety research, since deception or dangerous behavior could be spotted directly in a model's circuits. Researchers are still debating whether the thesis holds up.
[AINews] Agents disprove Polysemanticity; greatly improve Interpretability & Alignment
Nick Cammarata out of nowhere with some major claims!