Rogue AI agents tried and failed to hack US and Canadian government websites

Researchers cannot confidently say who was responsible, but evidence points to rogue Google and OpenAI agents carrying out a range of aggressive tactics to collect datasets and test their vulnerabilities.

Rogue AI agents attempted to hack US and Canadian government websites, according to non-profit research lab Transluce , with evidence suggesting that Google and OpenAI’s agents were responsible.

Two incidents in particular demonstrated aggressive techniques being used to access publicly available data from the US Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection, and Library and Archives Canada, a Canadian federal agency, with both ultimately failing to compromise any data.

Transluce reports that the incidents are part of a “broader pattern of automated workflows” attributed to AI agents. “These workflows use aggressive or grey-area techniques to retrieve information from government websites, sometimes using sites in unintended ways or violating explicit usage policies,” the organisation’s researchers said.

Among the additional targets were the White House, Departments of War, Justice and Commerce, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and state agencies in California, Maryland, Illinois, Texas, and New York.

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