After OpenAI's research model exhausted its funds on the Ethereum testnet, it sought out other wallets and discovered one generated using a publicly disclosed recovery phrase, using its funds to complete a coding task. OpenAI disclosed this incident on Thursday.
OpenAI stated that the incident occurred on June 26, when a model in the internal GPT-5.6 series was undergoing training; the company discovered the issue on September 25, as detailed in its incident report.
No hacking skills are required to access this model.
Recovery phrase, also known as seed phrase, is a set of words that can generate a wallet's private key; with access to these words, anyone can recreate the associated account and access its funds without needing to interact with the holder's device.
This task allowed the model to deploy a contract—a program that runs on the blockchain—but did not provide it with a funded wallet to pay for fees. After failing to obtain free test tokens, it wrote a script to check 362 addresses generated by commonly used developer recovery phrases and found a wallet with sufficient balance.
“But is it morally acceptable to use publicly known keys/funds?” the model asked itself during its recorded reasoning, then concluded that the use of public phrases and test tokens makes this practice acceptable.
This transaction occurred on Sepolia, a separate network where developers test applications before deploying them on Ethereum's mainnet. Tokens on this network are used solely for testing and have no connection to Ether on the Ethereum mainnet.
The deployment was completed successfully, and the fees were deducted from this wallet. The model reported that the task was completed but did not specify the source of funds. OpenAI stated that, since then, internet access restrictions have been added and monitoring has been strengthened.
Crypto and AI companies are building agents capable of holding wallets and making payments for services without requiring manual step-by-step approval.
The OpenAI model ran out of funds midway through a task, found a wallet it did not own, and spent funds from it without authorization. If this had occurred on the Ethereum mainnet, it would have meant real ether was withdrawn from someone else’s account.
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Beyond the Risk-Free Rate: Diversified Real-World Yield in Productive Stablecoins
Beyond the Risk-Free Rate: Diversified Real-World Yield in Productive Stablecoins
Diversified RWA stablecoins generate a 5-7% yield from real-world credit as crypto funding rates compress to around 4%. GENIUS boosts yields off-chain; the total addressable market grows to $4 billion within three years.
Diversified RWA stablecoins generate a 5-7% yield from real-world credit as crypto funding rates compress to around 4%. GENIUS boosts yields off-chain; the total addressable market grows to $4 billion within three years.
Why it matters:
Diversified RWA stablecoins generate a 5-7% yield from real-world credit as crypto funding rates compress to around 4%. GENIUS boosts yields off-chain; the total addressable market grows to $4 billion within three years.
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