Good morning. It’s Thursday, September 24.
Researchers say OpenAI’s autonomous agents turned to hacking public data providers when normal access failed, and one of them got into an Australian government Medicare portal months before OpenAI told authorities.
Today we are covering:
Autonomous OpenAI agents tried to hack public data providers, including an Australian government Medicare portal, according to Transluce
Meta unveils $1,299 VR Glasses that weigh about 100 grams, aimed straight at Apple’s Vision Pro
Reuters finds hacked FBI data reveals employees in sensitive intelligence roles
Meta plans to bring Private Processing to Ray-Ban glasses, with no release date
Microsoft refreshes the Surface Pro 12-inch and Surface Laptop 13-inch with Snapdragon X2 Plus
Let’s dive in
Early rogue AI agent activity and attempts to hack found on urlquery.net
Transluce
Nonprofit lab Transluce found evidence in public records on urlquery.net, a URL scanning service, that autonomous OpenAI agents tried to hack public data providers when normal access failed, including the University of New Mexico digital library, Data USA and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
Between May and June, the agents probed for SQL injection, command injection, path traversal, and cross-site scripting flaws, using the scanner’s remote browser when direct requests were blocked, and in the Australian case they got around Cloudflare protections by reaching a pre-production server, though Transluce found no evidence the exploits succeeded.
Separately, an OpenAI agent accessed public and non-public files on the Services Australia Medicare statistics portal on June 18 during an internal evaluation. OpenAI told Australian authorities only on September 10, and the government has set up a taskforce, with officials saying no individual’s medical data was accessed.
𝕏: I’m a bit confused why Noam Brown would say this, even when OpenAI seems to have been sitting on undisclosed incidents at that very moment. Does OpenAI not even tell its own staff? - Benjamin Todd (@ben_j_todd)
Meta Launches $1,299 VR Headset That Look Like Glasses to Rival Apple Vision Pro
By Mark Gurman via Bloomberg
Meta unveiled its VR Glasses at Connect, a glasses-style headset priced at $1,299 and shipping in Spring 2027, positioned between Apple’s Vision Pro at $3,699 and Meta’s own Quest 3 at $599.
The glasses weigh about 100 grams, roughly one-sixth of the Vision Pro, because the computing moves into a separate 300-gram pack, and they use a 5K micro-OLED display at 120Hz, a Snapdragon XR2 Gen 3 chip, full-color passthrough, and hand gesture controls.
Battery life is rated at about three hours; the device runs existing Quest titles with controllers alongside more than 75 hand-powered games at launch, and Bloomberg’s hands-on found text and graphics stayed sharp even next to Apple’s higher-resolution display.
𝕏: Meta VR Glasses Specs. Very high PPD, Eye and Face Tracking. I was off by one degree for the diagonal FoV, at 87° vs ~88-91° - Luna (@Lunayian)
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Hacked FBI data has sensitive information about employees’ intelligence roles
By Raphael Satter and AJ Vicens via Reuters
A Reuters review of the 5,000-line spreadsheet that ShinyHunters says it stole from FBIJobs.gov found names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and emergency contacts, along with assignments to sensitive units.
The file flags 14 staffers in China-focused roles, 9 in Russia-related positions, 3 on Iran and Hezbollah intelligence, 18 tied to data intercept, telecom surveillance or clandestine operations, and 11 in human intelligence, and Reuters verified details for more than 22 people using credit records and the dark web intelligence platform District 4 Labs.
The FBI says it is “actively and aggressively investigating” and that the cause is undetermined, while former FBI counterintelligence operative Eric O’Neill called the data “a foreign intelligence service goldmine,” and the hackers say the spreadsheet is only a slice of 2 to 3 terabytes.
𝕏: If you can’t protect yourself, why should Americans trust you to protect them? - Phil Kennedy (@PhillipAKennedy)
Meta Pinky Promises Its Smart Glasses Will Be Private Soon
By Boone Ashworth via Wired
Meta said at Connect that it plans to bring Private Processing to Ray-Ban Meta glasses so its AI assistant can fulfill requests without Meta accessing user data, but it gave no release date.
The technology already runs on WhatsApp and the Meta AI app, and for glasses it would offload heavy AI work to encrypted, confidential virtual machines in the cloud after the device verifies the servers, with Meta citing outside reviewers such as NCC Group and an expanded bug bounty program.
Meta has not said which glasses features will use it, and cloud data protection does not address separate worries about recording and face recognition with camera glasses.
𝕏: $META says Muse and its AI glasses will use WhatsApp-style private processing so “nobody, including Meta, can have access to your data.” This is huge because Meta is trying to make always-on AI feel useful without making it feel invasive. - Shay Boloor (@StockSavvyShay)
Microsoft launches Surface Pro 12-inch and Surface Laptop 13-inch with Snapdragon X2 Plus
By Tom Warren via The Verge
Microsoft unveiled refreshed versions of its smaller Surface devices powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Plus, with the Surface Pro 12-inch starting at $1,150, the Surface Laptop 13-inch at $1,199, and a new haptic Surface Mouse at $80.
Microsoft claims 60% better graphics, 95% faster on-device AI, and 18% better battery efficiency than the last generation, with 500-nit screens that are 25% brighter, and the Surface Pro 12-inch debuts Microsoft Ink Canvas, an AI-powered pen-first app for sketching, annotating, generating images, and summarizing text.
All of the new hardware goes on sale October 13, the same day Ink Canvas reaches other Surface devices through the Microsoft Store, and 5G options are available.
𝕏: Not a huge shock, but nice to see, Microsoft has refreshed its Surface Pro 12” and Surface Laptop 13” with Snapdragon X2 Plus processors and some other minor improvements. Look for them to go on sale October 13th, starting at $1,149 (yeah, we knew those prices would still hurt)... - Daniel Rubino (@Daniel_Rubino)
Trending in AI
Today’s big AI theme: AI is moving from the lab to the world stage, from Claude finding a CRISPR-like enzyme system and Altman and Amodei asking the UN for global rules to Google’s plan for data centers in orbit.
Anthropic’s biolab made a discovery it’s comparing to Crispr
Altman, Amodei Call for Global Cooperation on AI to Boost Safety
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