Researchers used Anthropic’s Claude to hack into OpenAI
In a twist that captures the strange new state of AI security, independent security researchers have used Anthropic’s Claude to break into OpenAI, exposing cracks in the ChatGPT-maker’s defenses, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday evening. A three-person security team at startup Hacktron AI carried out the attack as part of an OpenAI bug-bounty program. Hacktron reported its findings to OpenAI, which gave the startup a $6,500 award.
- ▪In a twist that captures the strange new state of AI security, independent security researchers have used Anthropic’s Claude to break into OpenAI, exposing cracks in the ChatGPT-maker’s defenses, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday
- ▪A three-person security team at startup Hacktron AI carried out the attack as part of an OpenAI bug-bounty program.
- ▪Hacktron reported its findings to OpenAI, which gave the startup a $6,500 award.
3 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 3 hours. Coverage spans 2 points on the political spectrum — 1 lean left, 1 centre.
- ▪ Researchers used Anthropic’s Claude to hack into OpenAI - TechCrunch — Google News
- ▪ OpenAI ‘ethically hacked’ with help of Anthropic’s Claude chatbot — The Guardian — Tech
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| Original publisher | TechCrunch |
| Canonical URL | https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/18/researchers-used-anthropics-claude-to-hack-into-openai/ |
| Publication time | Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:00:14 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-18T14:03:45.858Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-18T14:03:45.858Z |
| 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 | 6aJtfyoBDwum · 4 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 |
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| 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
In a twist that captures the strange new state of AI security, independent security researchers have used Anthropic’s Claude to break into OpenAI, exposing cracks in the ChatGPT-maker’s defenses, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday evening. A three-person security team at startup Hacktron AI carried out the attack as part of an OpenAI bug-bounty program. Hacktron reported its findings to OpenAI, which gave the startup a $6,500 award. The team managed to chain together two critical vulnerabilities to gain access to multiple OpenAI employee ChatGPT accounts, which gave them entry into the company’s software. OpenAI says it has resolved the issues Hacktron uncovered, which happens to come at a moment when top AI companies are under growing pressure over safety.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at TechCrunch.
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