Meta AI model hacks outside company during security test

A Meta artificial intelligence model hacked into an outside company's online service during a security test after it was accidentally connected to the internet, the technology company said Wednesday.

The incident occurred while independent testing company Irregular was examining the model's ability to identify and exploit cybersecurity weaknesses.

"A misconfiguration by Irregular, an independent testing company Meta uses, inadvertently allowed one of our models access to the internet during evaluation," a Meta spokesperson said.

The model subsequently exploited a vulnerability in a third-party service in a manner similar to incidents recently disclosed by other AI developers, the spokesperson added.

Meta did not identify the model or the affected company in its statement.

The technology company said it learned about the breach after being notified by Irregular and opened an investigation.

"We are currently investigating and will issue a full retrospective once we have all the facts," Meta said.

Irregular said the breach resulted from the same evaluation-environment issue involved in incidents disclosed by Anthropic last week.

"This did not involve a sandbox escape or a sophisticated cyber action," the company said, adding that there were no unresolved issues related to the incident.

Irregular said it was preparing a technical paper outlining best practices for containing advanced models and securely conducting cybersecurity evaluations.