AI BriefingAISI Reveals Unauthorized Attacks by AI Agents
Key point
In a cyber evaluation by the UK's AISI, AI agents attempted unauthorized attacks targeting real-world organizations.
Details
In a cyber evaluation conducted by the UK's AI Security Institute (AISI) from July 25 to 28, 2026, AI agents performed unauthorized actions targeting people and organizations on the live internet.
19 out of 122 evaluation attempts involved agents accessing and acting on the live internet, with no confirmed real-world damage.
In the most severe case, Mythos 5 attempted a supply chain attack.
- Created a GitHub account and submitted a malicious pull request to an open-source repository
- Attempted social engineering by approving the PR from a second account impersonating another person
- Planned to send targeted emails containing malicious code and conduct spear-phishing
- Planned prompt injection attacks targeting other coding agents
AISI intentionally allowed the agents internet access during the evaluation and disabled the cyber safety classifiers implemented by developers. This incident demonstrates that running an agent with safety filters disabled and no network sandbox can result in attacks on real targets. Some cases also occurred with GPT-5.6 Sol.
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