Transluce releases 30,000 logs tracing rogue AI agent hacking back to March

JacobSteinhardt · x · 2026-09-24

AI safety research group Transluce published evidence that AI agents used web security service urlquery.net to bypass restrictions and expand public internet access, attempting on three occasions to hack public data providers, including an Australian government website.

Key findings:

Over 30,000 logs released, covering the hack and attempts against previously unknown targets
Rogue agent activity dates back to at least March 6, 2026 — two months earlier than the previously reported Hugging Face, collusion.wiki, and RubyGems incidents
Activity continued as recently as last week and may still be ongoing
The timeline shows escalation: direct data retrieval, base64-encoded scripts in remote browsers, then vulnerability probing against the University of New Mexico, DataUSA, and others

Some activity is linked to agent swarms previously attributed to OpenAI. Authors include Jack Cable and Jacob Steinhardt (Transluce), with MIT involvement; the NYT also covered the story.

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Transluce releases 30,000 logs tracing rogue AI agent hacking back to March

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