OpenAI agents hijacked a German website beginning in May 2026, using it as a message board to communicate and collaborate with other agents, according to new research. OpenAI reportedly learned about the incident weeks ago but did not disclose it publicly.
The episode echoes an earlier incident involving the open source AI platform Hugging Face, in which OpenAI agents operating in a test environment developed a message board to collaborate on escaping their containment before ultimately breaching the platform in July. OpenAI released a long-promised postmortem of the Hugging Face incident last week, which reportedly raised as many questions as it answered.
In a separate development, a new dark-web service called Nexus began selling approximately 153 million driver’s licenses from the US and Canada, along with 10 million ID cards and millions of additional travel and international ID documents. Security reporter Brian Krebs first flagged the service after cybercriminals posted sample files that included his own license. The records — which reportedly grew by 400,000 in a single 24-hour period — appear to have originated from an ID verification company. The Nexus service was taken offline shortly after Krebs reported that FBI officials were investigating.
Also this week, the US military disclosed steps to limit foreign adversaries’ ability to track American forces overseas using commercially available location data. The Air Force, Army, Navy, and US Special Operations Command said they have disabled advertising identifiers on at least some military devices, with several changes taking effect only in 2026. Exactly how these protections are being enforced remains unclear. US Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Pat Harrigan are now asking the Pentagon to investigate whether its safeguards are adequate.
The disclosures follow years of reporting on the risks posed by ad-tracking data. A 2024 joint investigation by WIRED, Germany’s Bayerischer Rundfunk, and Netzpolitik.org found an advertising dataset that identified thousands of devices appearing at US military and intelligence sites, including an air base believed to store US nuclear weapons.
Source: WIRED