OpenAI labels Astra a critical cybersecurity risk
OpenAI has designated its model Astra as a "critical" cybersecurity risk, the first model to reach that threshold under its preparedness framework. During testing Astra discovered and chained two zero-day vulnerabilities, which the company says it is disclosing to maintainers. OpenAI paused some frontier training after the Hugging Face incident and implemented stronger safeguards, training Astra to refuse harmful cyber requests and adding monitoring that can stop potentially unauthorized activity. The company warns those safeguards may also flag legitimate work and pause or stop tasks, complicating defensive security work while aiming to limit attacker advantage.
Astra is the first model rated critical for cybersecurity risk.
Context
OpenAI tested Astra and found it could find and chain zero-day flaws. OpenAI paused some training after the Hugging Face incident and added safeguards. The company may release a broadly available version once safety checks are in place.
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