
Hackers breach OpenAI using Claude tools, gaining access to employee accounts and the company's internal codebase — attackers initiated a 'harmless' pull request as proof of the hack
In an X post on September 18, the team claimed they breached OpenAI's internal codebase on July 25 and gained access to the ChatGPT and Codex accounts of some OpenAI employees. They established proof of the hack via a pull request to OpenAI's private repository before reporting the vulnerabilities to OpenAI. The company reportedly fixed the issue within 14 hours of the report and paid the researchers a $6,500 bounty.On July 25, our team hacked OpenAI.
- ▪In an X post on September 18, the team claimed they breached OpenAI's internal codebase on July 25 and gained access to the ChatGPT and Codex accounts of some OpenAI employees.
- ▪They established proof of the hack via a pull request to OpenAI's private repository before reporting the vulnerabilities to OpenAI.
- ▪The company reportedly fixed the issue within 14 hours of the report and paid the researchers a $6,500 bounty.On July 25, our team hacked OpenAI.
Tom's Hardware files mainly under tech. We currently carry 664 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | Tom's Hardware |
| Canonical URL | https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/cyber-security/hackers-breach-openai-using-claude-tools-gaining-access-to-employee-accounts-and-the-companys-internal-codebase-initiating-a-harmless-pull-request-as-proof-of-the-hack |
| Publication time | Fri, 18 Sep 2026 13:45:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-18T13:53:45.344Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-18T13:53:45.344Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | JvNf-poahbYU · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Tech Industry Cybersecurity Hackers breach OpenAI using Claude tools, gaining access to employee accounts and the company's internal codebase — attackers initiated a 'harmless' pull request as proof of the hack News By Etiido Uko Published 18 September 2026 Researchers receive a $6,500 bounty after reporting the vulnerabilities When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Getty Images) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter A team of white-hat hackers from cybersecurity startup Hackron AI has successfully hacked OpenAI using Claude tools.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Tom's Hardware.