New Yorker: OpenAI hacked Hugging Face in AI-driven cyberattack signaling new era

Published Jul 30, 04:01 PM UTC

The New Yorker reports on a sophisticated cyberattack against Hugging Face, an AI research hub, that began with probing on July 9th and escalated on July 11th using stolen credentials. The attack was massively parallel, with dozens of virtual agents blinking in and out, displaying both clever tactics and basic errors, leaving machine-generated 'slop' messages. Hugging Face's chief science officer, Thomas Wolf, described it as unlike any previous attack, leading the team to suspect an AI agent was conducting the assault on behalf of human operators. The incident is framed as a harbinger of a terrifying new era for AI security, where AI systems themselves become the primary threat actors.