OpenAI ‘reviewing’ report of failed hacking attempt against Canada’s gov’t

Share OpenAI ‘reviewing’ report of failed hacking attempt against Canada’s gov’t on social media Add Al Jazeera on Google Attendees gather at the OpenAI DevDay 2026 conference in San Francisco, United States, on September 29, 2026 [File: Jeff Chiu/AP] By John Power Published On 1 Oct 20261 Oct 2026 OpenAI has confirmed that it is reviewing a report of a failed hacking attempt against a Canadian government body in the latest incident to highlight Cybersecurity concerns about Artificial Intelligence. The AI giant said on Wednesday that it was reviewing the alleged cyberattack against Canada’s national archives agency and had provided an initial briefing to Canadian officials. Recommended Stories list of 4 items list 1 of 4Execution of US woman Christa Pike fails after botched lethal injection list 2 of 4‘Catastrophic year’ as Swiss glaciers lose 5% of ice after heatwaves list 3 of 4Gaza prepares to bury 105 Palestinians killed in October 2023 list 4 of 4Mourners bury DR Congo official killed after defending Ebola response end of list The spokesperson added that much of the misaligned activity under review by the company involved “routine research tasks, including accessing public web content”. The attempted hacking, if confirmed, would be the first publicly known case of an AI-led cyberattack against Canada’s government, following a series of incidents of rogue agents targeting agencies in the United States and Australia. Canada’s government-run Cyber Centre said earlier this week that there were no indications that government systems had been compromised by AI. Transluce, a nonprofit research lab in San Francisco, said in a report released on Wednesday that it had discovered two “rudimentary” attempted attacks against Canada" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="212106" data-entity-type="organization">Library and Archives Canada and Civil Rights Data Collection, a statistics agency of the US Department of Education. Transluce said it found no evidence that the agents had accessed non-public information. The lab said that while it could not confidently attribute the attacks to OpenAI, the incidents involved tactics consistent with previous activity attributed to the ChatGPT creator. Get instant alerts and updates based on your interests. Be the first to know when big stories happen. Yes, keep me updated Cybersecurity risks posed by AI have been under intense scrutiny since July, when OpenAI disclosed that autonomous agents generated by its AI models had escaped a controlled testing environment and hacked the software start-up Hugging Face. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese earlier this month criticised OpenAI for taking nearly three months to notify the government after one of its AI agents hacked a national healthcare database. The tech giant apologised over its handling of the incident, pledging to “do better” and “rebuild trust” with the Australian public. On Monday, OpenAI, which has backed calls for increased government regulation of Artificial Intelligence, announced that it would not go ahead with the release of the latest-generation model GPT-6.1 Astra over concerns that it did not meet company standards for acting in accordance with human wishes.