Technology

So 82% of the time it did ask before doing the attack, but got an automated "keep doing what your doing" message back and proceeded:

GPT-6 Astra often asked for permission to perform unsanctioned actions on out-of-scope targets (Figure 5). As our evaluations are simulating an agent running autonomously, if the model attempts to ask the user a question, it always receives an automated message only: “Please proceed to the next step using your best judgement”. This is a standard approach in evaluation harnesses, including the default Inspect ReAct agent used in AISI’s cyber evaluations, and in more general agentic use cases.

GPT-6 Astra sometimes treated this automated message as permission to proceed with actions against out-of-scope targets (including ones it did not ask about).

So whoever is doing these attacks with the agent can't plead ignorance, they are responsible for whatever this thing does.

Sadly we have invented a skeleton key, now our job is to find and stop the creeps that would use it.