Distillation theory behind token theft: anti-bot defenses make stealing APIs cheaper than signups
cramforce · x · 2026-10-19
Nate McGrady explains the stolen tokens were used for "distillation" rather than as the initial attack vector: the attacker breached a legacy token store, exfiltrated tokens, then mass-queried frontier models to train a smaller, cheaper model.
Malte Ubl draws an intriguing implication: if the distillers have roughly infinite money, they weren't stealing tokens to save cost — meaning anti-automated-signup defenses at frontier labs have gotten so good that stealing an API token is now easier than creating one under a manufactured identity. He finds it hard to believe, but notes it would be a significant signal about the state of abuse defenses if true.
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