Would you be open to collaborating to investigate whether we can further widen this bugged behavior, demonstrate that it's serious, and get it fixed? You could reach me at strangecompanyventure@gmail.com

It sounds like the bug affecting your account is uncommon, making your account special, and as an AI security researcher I can help investigate the extent of the issue and I have contacts that can help call attention to it. Thank you for discovering this and trying to escalate this.

Serious question: What gave you the impression the company is security savvy?

> It's hard enough to report issues to OpenAI.

Not at all. OpenAI follows basic accepted standards for security reporting. This is like complaining that you can't find if a website doesn't want specific directories crawled because you don't know about the existence of a robots.txt.

Specifically, OpenAI has a security.txt [0], which is:

> an accepted standard for website security information that allows security researchers to report security vulnerabilities easily [1]

Whenever attempting to find where to report a security issue, the easiest thing to do is always check if the website has a security.txt file.

[0] https://openai.com/security.txt

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security.txt

Here's their security.txt:

  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
  Hash: SHA512
  
  #
  #           .d88888b.             
  #         .8P"     "9bd888b.      
  #        .8P     .d8P"   `"988.   
  #     .8888   .d8P"    ,     98.  
  #   .8P" 88   8"    .d98b.    88  
  #  .8P   88   8 .d8P"   "98b. 88  
  #  88    88   8P"  `"8b.    "98.  
  #  88.   88   8       8"8b.    88 
  #   88    "98.8       8   88   "88
  #    `8b.    "98.,  .d8   88    88
  #    88 "98b.   .d8P" 8   88   d8"
  #    88    "98bP"    .8   88 .d8" 
  #    "8b     `    .d8P"   8888"   
  #     "88b.,   .d8P"     d8"      
  #       "9888P98b.     .d8"       
  #               "988888P"         
  #
  Contact: https://bugcrowd.com/openai
  Acknowledgments: https://bugcrowd.com/openai/hall-of-fame
  Policy: https://openai.com/policies/coordinated-vulnerability-disclosure-policy
  Hiring: https://openai.com/careers/search?c=security
  Canonical: https://openai.com/.well-known/security.txt
  Encryption: https://cdn.openai.com/security/disclosure.asc.pub
  
  # You may also email us directly.
  Contact: mailto:disclosure@openai.com
  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
  
  iHUEARYKAB0WIQQ5fYPd6Hi19rZDZ+kKj1HZ7OnINQUCZbiKWgAKCRAKj1HZ7OnI
  NS9+AQCTx4vlrCp+Urd1fa/lAQ3dcV8VNHOxA4JnxD0TH2nxwQEAuqoxenxPZWeD
  +IsSikn4em/LEheOeAakGDzZedcu1QE=
  =rMRk
  -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

    Hello and thank you for reaching out to OpenAI. Our vulnerability disclosure program has migrated to OpenAI's bug bounty program, and this mailbox is no longer monitored. Please use the "submit report" functionality available through our bug bounty platform to inform us of security concerns, or reach out to support@openai.com for any non-security-related inquiries.

    Thank you for your help in securing OpenAI!

    Bug Bounty Program: https://bugcrowd.com/openai

Who has claimed OpenAI is security-savvy?

Huh? I just went to OpenAI.com and there is a little "Security" link in the bottom pile that points to https://openai.com/security-and-privacy/ .

Under "Reporting security issues" it points you to a bug bounty page: https://bugcrowd.com/openai with a bunch of explanations.

I'm guessing if you also just send an email to security@openai.com it'll go to someone. Using Bugcrowd just seems like a nice way to also run a bug bounty as part of their normal intake.

    Upon reviewing your report and consulting with the OpenAI team, we have determined that this feature is operating as intended. This means it does not constitute a valid sandbox escape. The Code Interpreter environment is securely sandboxed to support code writing and execution, including shell operations. Any code execution within this environment falls outside the scope of our program ... As you have not demonstrated a valid sandbox escape or RCE, we're closing this submission as Not Applicable.

> Ya I hope people are not putting any sensitive information when using Chat GPT.

The ship has sailed, OpenAI wants you to put everything in their system. It makes them more valuable. They know there is no repercussions because their base will blindly advocate for them regardless under the guise of “the best llm”.

Sounds like they got access to email and Slack; that’s the gateway to a lot of other things. Fact is, OpenAI was booming at the time of this hack and they had every incentive to play down the severity internally. The hackers may not have gotten access to the “systems housing key technologies”, ie no SSH access to the production VMs (although I’m not sure I would trust that OpenAI’s auditing of such access was foolproof) but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have done a lot of other damage, gathered all sorts of source code and secrets, or put a backdoor in somewhere. All in all, given the claims they are making and the level of trust they demand from their customers, they ought to have been far more open at the time.

> It’s completely normal to not disclose a breach if there’s no proof or great likelihood that customers were implicated.

A bit more complicated than that for public companies. But OpenAI is private, so yeah, they most likely don't have to. It's still an interesting scoop for a journalist, though.

Do not waste your energy thinking that companies like this will be “consistently candid”. That’s not what they’re here for, and it’s clear from other events in their history that they have no interest in this.