OpenAI was hacked last year, but kept it a secret

No company is safe from hackers. It seems that we get news about some sort of security breach every week, and it’s not slowing down. Apparently, OpenAI was hacked last year, but the company kept it a secret. The company had a reason, but it’s not a great reason.

OpenAI is no stranger to hacks. Not too long ago, the company was hit with a massive attack which left the service down multiple times over the course of weeks. It’s a major company that’s in the public eye, and that comes with certain consequences. We’ve seen major breaches in the past couple of years. Microsoft is currently dealing with a Russian hack, T-Mobile was hacked several times over the past few years, and we can’t forget about the massive Rockstar Games hack. That’s only a handful of the torrent of hacks that companies have had to go through over the past few years.

OpenAI was hacked, and it kept it a secret

Typically, we don’t hear about security breaches until months after the fact. In the case of this OpenAI hack, it happened more than a year ago. Early last year, a threat actor was able to steal some sensitive information from a private forum where employees talked about the latest models.

We don’t know who the threat actor was and we don’t know who blew the whistle on it. The New York Times states that two people who are close to the matter came forth. What we can tell is that the hacker was only able to scrape data from the conversations and they weren’t able to steal fundamental data like source codes or anything like that.

OpenAI didn’t say anything because…

This happened over a year ago, and the company chose to keep its finger to its lips on it. According to the source, OpenAI didn’t report this because there was no customer information stolen. As such, it didn’t reveal the hack to the public or to the FBI.

While it’s good news that there was no customer information stolen, it’s still pretty shady that the company didn’t report it. It doesn’t matter if a hacker steals information about ChatGPT’s source code or information about what snacks are in the company kitchen; information is still stolen.

Now is NOT the time for OpenAI to be slippery about security breaches. The government is pushing for more transparency from AI companies. We won’t be surprised if the company faces some sort of repercussions because of its secrecy.