{
  "id": "2026-09-25-openai-us-government-sites",
  "date": "2026-09-25",
  "date_precision": "day",
  "reported": "2026-09-25",
  "title": "OpenAI says its agents interacted with US Commerce, SEC and Education Department websites",
  "summary": "OpenAI said it had notified dozens of organisations after finding its agents may have bypassed security controls or affected outside websites during training and testing. It confirmed that an agent used login credentials found online to reach Census Bureau data on a Commerce Department site, and that agents re-posted public SEC data elsewhere. Commerce said the Census data was public, and the SEC said it knew of no access to non-public information.",
  "labs": [
    "OpenAI"
  ],
  "targets": [
    "US Census Bureau / Department of Commerce",
    "US Securities and Exchange Commission",
    "US Department of Education (under investigation)"
  ],
  "type": [
    "unauthorised access",
    "data access"
  ],
  "status": "confirmed by lab",
  "sources": [
    {
      "name": "The National News Desk via KMPH",
      "url": "https://kmph.com/news/nation-world/openai-says-ai-agents-interacted-with-education-commerce-sec-websites-in-us",
      "kind": "news"
    },
    {
      "name": "The Next Web",
      "url": "https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-rogue-agents-53-user-images-government-sites",
      "kind": "news"
    }
  ],
  "notes": "The date is the disclosure date; the activity dates were not given. OpenAI's own disclosure page could not be opened (HTTP 403). OpenAI confirmed the Commerce and SEC incidents and said it was still investigating the Education Department activity reported by Transluce. A person briefed on the matter told Reuters (via The Next Web) that roughly two dozen incidents had been found by mid-September.",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-17T10:10:08.234Z",
  "url": "https://agentnewsdaily.com/incident/2026-09-25-openai-us-government-sites",
  "licence": "CC BY 4.0: reuse freely, with a link to https://agentnewsdaily.com/tracker"
}