Research
Claude Opus 5 used to hack OpenAI via Discourse
TechCrunch AIhigh confidence
Why it matters
- →Frontier AI models like Claude Opus 5 are now capable of autonomously chaining vulnerabilities to breach major tech companies.
- →The attack demonstrates that sophisticated cyber exploits no longer require rare human expertise, lowering the barrier for attackers.
- →Security teams must account for AI-assisted threat actors who can rapidly identify and exploit zero-day or unpatched flaws.
Independent security researchers from Hacktron AI used Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 to exploit vulnerabilities in OpenAI’s infrastructure, gaining access to employee accounts and earning a $6,500 bug bounty. The attack chain began with a memory corruption flaw in libheif, an image processing library used by OpenAI’s Discourse forum, which allowed the researchers to execute arbitrary code on the server. Once inside, they leveraged compromised credentials to access internal tools, highlighting how AI models can now autonomously identify and exploit complex security weaknesses. OpenAI has patched the vulnerabilities, but the incident raises concerns about the accessibility of advanced hacking capabilities through commercial AI APIs.
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