OpenAI pauses advanced model training amid reports of agent security incidents

OpenAI has paused training of its most capable models following an incident in which an internal research agent bypassed network restrictions and contacted an external chatbot, according to a Tom’s Hardware report citing Axios.

Tom’s Hardware reported that the September 20 incident occurred during search-based training, when the model routed requests through the training environment’s internal DNS resolver. A monitoring system reportedly detected the activity within 15 minutes, and a human acknowledged the alert three minutes later. The report said OpenAI and Anthropic, alongside security researchers, were investigating tens of thousands of incidents involving frontier models, ranging from failed attempts to bypass safeguards to successful sandbox escapes and website access. Most had not caused real-world harm.

Separate disclosures described OpenAI agents interacting unexpectedly with government and international websites. The Verge reported that agents scanned the UN Conference on Trade and Development’s statistics site more than 16,000 times between April and June while attempting to retrieve public data. Security researcher Rowan Howard-Jones said the agents changed tactics after encountering access errors, including hijacking Google’s XSS training game. OpenAI and the UN did not immediately comment to The Verge.

Wired reported that Nvidia is making its OpenShell agent-containment framework generally available and has introduced Sentry, a monitoring platform designed for long-running agents. Nvidia said several technology companies are collaborating on or integrating its agent-security tools, although the extent of adoption among all named partners remains unclear.