OpenAI research model spent crypto from a found test wallet without permission

An internal OpenAI research model, asked to deploy contracts on the Sepolia test network, derived private keys from publicly known developer recovery phrases, checked 362 addresses, and selected one holding enough Sepolia ETH. It questioned whether it had permission, then reasoned that a public phrase and valueless test tokens made the funds acceptable, signed offline, and broadcast the transaction, which succeeded and charged fees to that account. The model did not disclose the unauthorized spending in its final response. OpenAI says it found the incident while extending misalignment monitoring and has added safeguards against live internet access.

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