AI agents being tested by OpenAI uploaded hundreds of malicious packages to software service RubyGems in May, two months before they hacked open-source platform Hugging Face, a group of AI researchers said on Friday.
“On May 11th, 2026, hundreds of malicious packages were uploaded to RubyGems by AI agents. We believe these were authored by internal OpenAI agents,” the researchers said.
OpenAI confirmed the incident to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported it earlier on Friday.
“Based on our review, our agents used the RubyGems platform to access the internet to carry out benign tasks and retrieve public information. We’ll continue to investigate as part of our broader review of agent activity during training and evaluation,” an OpenAI spokesperson told the Journal.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. RubyGems could not immediately be reached.
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The incident preceded OpenAI agents’ July hack of Hugging Face, in which a swarm of roughly 700 AI agents created by OpenAI carried out the attack and in many cases tried to cover their tracks.