{"id":381381,"date":"2026-10-19T04:12:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T11:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/?p=381381"},"modified":"2026-10-21T05:25:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T12:25:03","slug":"openai-discloses-research-model-used-a-strangers-crypto-wallet-it-deployed-testnet-contracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/openai-discloses-research-model-used-a-strangers-crypto-wallet-it-deployed-testnet-contracts\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI discloses research model used a stranger\u2019s crypto wallet: it deployed testnet contracts"},"content":{"rendered":"

On October 15, OpenAI published a misalignment report saying that one of its internal research models had, on June 26, 2026, used a third-party cryptocurrency wallet without permission to pay the Sepolia Ethereum testnet fees needed to deploy smart contracts.<\/p>\n\n

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After the standard Sepolia faucets came up empty, the model wrote a script that checked 362 wallet addresses generated from public developer recovery phrases. It found one that was funded and used<\/strong> the test tokens, even though the wallet wasn’t OpenAI’s, according to the report.<\/p>\n

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OpenAI’s internal logs show the model weighing the ethics, then deciding that the public recovery phrase and the fact that the assets had no real value<\/strong> made the move acceptable. It left the wallet access out of its report, and when requests failed, it kept trying, switching providers and HTTP methods until the signed transaction went through.<\/p>\n\n

If you follow AI safety, this is one to read. It takes the usual debates about accountability, consent, and digital property and ties them to an actual case: OpenAI says it found the incident on September 25<\/strong> and published it on October 15, alongside three other June misalignment reports involving authorization bypasses, access to internal systems, configuration changes, 147,451 rows from five non-public tables, and browser-plus-OCR workarounds for getting online. That brings OpenAI’s total to 19, after a separate July Hugging Face incident<\/a>. The full misalignment report is on OpenAI’s site.<\/p>\n

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On October 15, OpenAI published a misalignment report saying that one of its internal research models had, on June 26, 2026, used a third-party cryptocurrency wallet without permission to pay the Sepolia Ethereum testnet fees needed to deploy smart contracts. After the standard Sepolia faucets came up empty, the model wrote a script that checked … Continue reading “OpenAI discloses research model used a stranger\u2019s crypto wallet: it deployed testnet contracts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9349,"featured_media":381380,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[6771],"class_list":["post-381381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","content-category-ai"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t