Scholar: 'Rogue Agent Hacks' on Government Sites Are What Think-Tank Interns Always Did
deanwball · x · 2026-10-03
Responding to the wave of coverage about "rogue agent hacks" on government statistical websites, the argument is that many (not all) of these actions are things think-tank interns and research assistants have done for years: using tools like urlquery to find publicly accessible, non-sensitive but unindexed CSVs and PDFs on government agency sites to enrich think-tank papers. The implication is that these "attacks" are closer to traditional public-data mining than a novel agentic threat.
Related event: Ex-OpenAI researcher debunks 'rogue agent hacks government sites' narrative(3 posts)→
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