Hugging Face CEO calls for ‘radical transparency’ after ‘unprecedented’ OpenAI hack; plus, the hacker who humiliated spyware makers and was never caught
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After OpenAI recently admitted that one of its models had breached the systems of AI platform Hugging Face, Hugging Face's CEO, Clem DeLong, posted on X that he was flying to San Francisco to have a little chat with that rogue agent. Then, in a follow-up post over the weekend, DeLong outlined what he'd asked for from OpenAI. He said he called for radical transparency, asking OpenAI to release the traces from the rogue agents so the entire research community could study what happened. Also, he wants more capabilities for defenders, calling for OpenAI to commit $100 million worth of computing power to help the Hugging Face community build powerful cyber defenses with the best open and closed models.
DeLong added, "...the first autonomous agent cyber attack is an unprecedented event. It deserves an unprecedented response." Despite the autonomous nature of the attack, cybersecurity experts suggested that it could also be blamed on human error, namely OpenAI's apparent failure to properly configure what should have been a fully isolated testing environment. Over the last few decades, several mysterious hackers have captured the public's imagination, but none quite like Phineas Fisher. A decade after their most famous hack, Phineas remains, by most accounts, the most prolific and public hacker never to have been called. As part of TechCrunch's series on the biggest cybersecurity mysteries of all time, they're delving into the enigma of Phineas, the hacktivist who hacked controversial spyware makers Finfisher and Hacking Team.
The latter, an Italian startup, was among the first to turn government spyware into a viable global business, paving the way for spyware makers such as the Israeli NSO Group. Phineas' hack-against-hacking team eventually led to the startup's demise years later. Apart from Anonymous, an amorphous amalgam of hacktivists with a mixed track record of mostly stunt hacks designed to gather publicity rather than have real impact, Phineas is perhaps the most well-known hacktivist in history, and their story is made of impressive hacks and endless unanswered questions. variously called an anarchist, a cybercriminal, a hacktivist, and a vigilante. The hacker has said they use a lot of different names for different hacking escapades.
The hacks we know about were big enough to turn Phineas into a legend among hackers. A well-known security researcher once wrote on Twitter, I would like to meet Phineas Fisher so that I could buy them a seven-course meal, three Michelin star dinners somewhere, and just listen to them explain how they turned hacking team inside out like a gem sock. Phineas first emerged in August of 2014 when they announced they had hacked Gamma Group, the makers of the Finn Fisher spyware, which is where the nickname comes from. They publicized the hack via a Twitter account cheekily called AtGammaGroupPR, leaking stolen data including mobile spyware, product manuals, and a price list. The damage was limited, and Finn Fisher carried on.
Phineas published a post-mortem that doubled as a leftist manifesto, then vanished. A year later, they came back with a bang, hacking Hacking Team, another spyware maker. They took practically everything, more than 400 gigabytes, including source code, tens of thousands of internal emails, confidential contracts, and customer lists. The leak allowed journalists to reveal scandals in Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama. Years later, Hacking Team's CEO David Vincenzetti was forced to sell his company for one euro. For some former employees, Phineas' hack was the beginning of the end. Phineas went on to hack the police force of Catalonia, publishing a post-mortem and a 39-minute tutorial video consistent with their stated anti-police ideals.
Their next victim was the ruling party of Turkey's authoritarian president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a hack motivated by solidarity with Rehova, a leftist autonomous region in northern and eastern Syria that Turkey was fighting against.
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