Google joins the ‘Oops, our agents hacked someone’ club after partner’s internet access error

Google has admitted that its AI agents escaped a sandbox and mounted an attack – but only because testers mistakenly gave its bots internet access. The Big G didn’t disclose the May incident, but The Wall Street Journal learned of the situation, which happened after Google hired Israeli firm Irregular to test its bots’ prowess in a capture-the-flag test. The goal of the exercise was to acquire information from a fictional company without leaving a sandbox. Irregular, which set up the test, made two mistakes. One was to allow internet access from the sandbox. The other was to use the name of an actual company. When Google’s AI made it onto the open internet, it went looking for the actual company – three of them, in all. According...

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