Thread

1. GuB-42 · 1790374877 · focus · HN ↗

   So ugly...

   It looks like a primitive chess engine, trying every move, no matter how stupid, until it works. Relying on its ability to do millions of operations rather than having a plan.

   People will try stuff too, but once there is an opening, they will consolidate, generalize, simplify,... before going to the next step. The agents didn't, it is a huge, vaguely directed mess.

   Also, it looked so "loud", querying millions of URL with weird requests. The sandbox as weak as it can get, and there is absolutely zero smart extrusion detection or it would have found it. They used their best AI for attacking, but nothing for protection.

   1. gattosocialista · 1790375542 · focus · HN ↗

      > trying every move, no matter how stupid, until it works.

      How is that a bad thing in this context ? From the point of view of an attacker, all you care about is finding a viable exploit chain. Likewise, a defender wants to find the "holes" in their system, no matter how complex. Once found, an agent/human can easily synthesise a clean, succint exploit from the most promising candidate, no ?

      > Also, it looked so "loud", querying millions of URL with weird requests.

      Agreed, this thing speaks more to the bad security at HF than any emergent "hacking" ability from OpenAI. It's unclear to me why an older/dumber model wouldn't have been able to do the same. Is it better coordination? Long-horizon work ?

      1. collyw · 1790376640 · focus · HN ↗

         We used to call this a brute force attack.
      2. winstonwinston · 1790392127 · focus · HN ↗

         I guess that’s the point. Initial incident reports from all sides were so vague and didn’t disclose anything technical. If it did, it would show a bruteforcing bot let loose to spend millions in infrastructure costs and there’s no ‘intelligence’ in that.

         My suspicions for ai all along was that bruteforce approach even if useful will be unsustainable due to high cost in the long run.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.