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OpenAI engineer arrested in bugging of executive conference room

OpenAI engineer arrested in bugging of executive conference room

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Comments (352)

  • simonw
    These are not very smart spies:> A chatbot account tied to Alfozan’s spouse, which shared identifiers with his own account, submitted prompts between Sept. 24 and Sept. 30 about building, installing, obscuring, and remotely accessing a recording device, prosecutors said. Queries included how to “build a continuous audio recorder” and “encrypt the SD card,” prosecutors claimed. On Sept. 27 and 28, the account asked about the specific device that was later found, including its unique MAC address.
  • dustfinger
    I am a bit confused by Figure 3. Do they really have a surveillance camera angled just right to capture a photo of someone between the monitor and the wall that supports it?Here is a direct link to Figure 3:https://assets.sfstandard.com/image/994911177489/image_bfl33...
  • simonw
    This guy previously worked at Meta from 2017 to 2022 on Data Infrastructure projects.I expect Meta are running an audit right now to figure out if he was involved in espionage back then as well.
  • mrandish
    > "Scott Schelble, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco field office, said the agency is committed to protecting sensitive research and proprietary technology."While the headlines and quotes seem designed to imply sophisticated industrial espionage, potentially by a state-level actor, what's public so far isn't adding up that way.1. You're not going to get much actionable research material on proprietary technologies by audio bugging what's said in an executive conference room. That's what you'd do if you were after economic or deal negotiation info.2. Hard to imagine a state-level actor buying a ~$15-$35 hobbyist ESP32 board from Seeed Studio (I've ordered a couple from there for home automation myself) and then asking a public chatbot for set up instructions.3. They say he was an "engineer" who'd been there ~15 months. If you're an actual engineer at OAI and past the 1 year cliff, you're probably already sitting on RSUs likely to be worth at least $1M after OAI's IPO - and maybe much more. That's a lot of incentive to not get fired and probably makes you pretty hard to recruit as an internal mole for cash.
  • minimaxir
    > We used our models to understand the device and where it had come fromDid OpenAI do a marketing bit in the middle of an espionage accusation?
  • delichon
    Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, was arrested Friday and charged with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50078141
  • ks2048
    > The man arrested for planting a secret recording device at OpenAI's headquarters is a Venture Partner of a VC firm alongside the son of a senior Saudi intelligence official:https://x.com/ScottMStedman/status/2110108735855333403?s=20
  • Topfi
    > We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from [...]I'll be the first one to admit, that got a hearty laugh out of me. Never miss an opportunity to market your models I guess.
  • throwa356262
    Part of the evidence was his wife's chatgpt logs.Remember kids, uncle Sam can see anything you tell your AI and will use that against you.
  • tqi
    "Meetings in the room frequently involved confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information, including proprietary research, product plans, and government engagements, according to the complaint."LOL imagine going to jail for trying to eavesdrop on product roadmap readouts that were likely thrown out 2 months later in the next round of reorgs and priority shifts.
  • BeetleB
    Chances are he'll escape back home before the trial:https://www.propublica.org/article/saudi-fugitives-accused-o...
  • Aboutplants
    He was just gathering training data
  • int32_64
    Between this and the Ledger implants I wonder if AI companies will have a supply chain risk in the future where their models get exfiltrated over 5G.Good time to start a company that builds giant Faraday cages over data centers.
  • ks2048
    Always fun to checkout the social media of the accused,https://x.com/alfozanNot too much there. A link to Tim Urban's "Your Life in Weeks" infographic. Life is short, dream big.
  • vostrocity
    How did they get that capture of Alfozan looking behind the TV? Does OpenAI install its own surveillance cameras behind TVs to prevent espionage?
  • ford
    I wonder how much state-sponsored corporate espionage there is. I'm not an OpenAI employee, but my mental model of tech startups involves a lot of openness/trust (it's one of the reasons people work there).I have to imagine many techniques/plans/figures are open secrets to nation states.
  • ajkjk
    Needless to say, it's the bad spies you hear about them catching.
  • binlog
    > According to OpenAI, its technical surveillance countermeasures team found the device during a sweep of a conference room.Not surprising that a large company does these kinds of sweeps, but pretty cool to see an example of them being useful. Every security guy who has been doing this for years without finding anything must feel so validated right now.
  • algoth1
    Skill issue. Could have just used the new apple watch or an LG tv
  • anon
    undefined
  • markus_zhang
    Smart guy does stupid things, but why? I mean why did he, as an engineer perhaps earning north to 300k, do such a sloppy job?Or maybe OpenAI is hiring the wrong guy? Maybe they should hire me instead?
  • mkotlikov
    He was trying to catch them during those meetings where the executives recite the full model weights
  • theturtletalks
    His Github is crazy, he pushed changed to official public OpenAI repos and in October all his commits are to private repos. I would check that first as an investigator.https://github.com/alfozan
  • seydor
    > The employee was terminated.in this context, they should be more specific about how terminal s/he is
  • anon
    undefined
  • I_am_tiberius
    You got me. I ask the obvious question: What's the "sophisticated" device?
  • nl
    Can anyone speculate why it was wrapped in a toilet paper roll?That seems odd, especially since it would dampen the sound recording
  • jacquesm
    Should have used a local model...
  • naruhodo
    You would think he had the skills, resources and intelligence to ask his incriminating questions to a locally hosted model.
  • alkyon
    I would like to see the chatbot history.ChatGPT: wait I'm considering if an inconspicuous piece of toilet paper should be wrapped about the device
  • VBprogrammer
    Thank god security at a company which...checks notes...has remote code execution on every developers laptop and access to practically unlimited secrets uploaded by its agents...is top notch.
  • tamimio
    Looking at the device pic in here https://sfstandard.com/2026/10/13/openai-engineer-arrested-a...It looks like it’s the (SeeedStudio XIAO ESP32S3 Sense w/ WiFi, BLE, OV2640, Mic) https://ca.robotshop.com/products/seeedstudio-xiao-esp32s3-s...Which is just an esp32s3 based device. I assume the word “sophisticated” in openAI report is just copy paste from device description.
  • anon
    undefined
  • ta93754829
    Of all the mistakes he made, you'd think at the most minimum he would have thought to use Claude instead of ChatGTP
  • guptadagger
    why can AI counter "sophisticated security threats" if the device was found with a bug sweep? because they gave chatgpt a image of the encrypted device and it "assessed changes in the underlying data"?
  • qkaze15
    Sounds like fair use to me! Information wants to be free, remember?
  • Imnimo
    I have seem some articles which reference allegations from court documents / complaint, but I haven't been able to find the primary source. Do we know if that's publicly available yet?
  • lestertomlin
    classic, glad we continue to support the saudi government...
  • mag7269
    lol… I hope I get to see the TV Show depicting the current era inside AI labs. It’ll give both The Sopranos and The Wire a run for their money for sure.
  • dzonga
    saudi been suffering a bunch of l's due to incompetence lately.
  • digitaltrees
    So, just so I understand, it’s ok to record conversations with ChatGPT users, train on their data, copy their features, front run their solutions to frontier math problems, all using intelligence extracted from the body of human writing from a data set from Russia known to be pirated. But recording a conversation in a conference room is grounds for termination.Got it.
  • nfw2
    > It was plugged into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room and had been concealed in toilet paper...uh what
  • ceroxylon
    Concealed in toilet paper? We are definitely not dealing with James Bond, that is a pretty hilariously backwards way of going about things. Did he really think that would be less suspicious looking than the dongle itself?
  • risphere
    Using your wife's chatbot account and covering a device in toilet paper is not smart when spying a company.
  • anon
    undefined
  • catchnear4321
    seeedstudio getting some impressive pr here for those xiao boards.
  • avaer
    Speaking of surreptitiously installed bugs, remember to opt out of training in your Codex.
  • _DeadFred_
    In case you need to sweep your area a decent review of anti spy devices by project farmhttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1reman2waLs
  • charcircuit
    Why make this public? Usually companies just silently terminate and pursue employees who do this.
  • Razengan
    An iPhone? A laptop?
  • newswasboring
    My brain is cooked on news. I read executive conference room and my brain immediately jumped to "they bugged the white house" (executive being the trigger word I guess). And I accepted it as normal so much that I checked the google model news discussion first before reading this article. I dont have a point to this beyond I need to do something about news frying my brain, that too of a country I don't even live in.
  • chews
    MBS using that sweet graykey behavior to exfiltrate what they can
  • CamperBob2
    >OpenAI said it has no indication that Alfozan improperly accessed or took model weights, source code, or customer dataSounds like we know where their priorities lie, anyway.
  • bethekidyouwant
    seems rare why would you throw your life away when you already are in the top one percent in America??
  • TacticalCoder
    > The device was concealed in toilet paper, and its contents were encrypted.Concealing a recording device in a conference room in toilet paper is a bit strange. Do executives meet in the toilets to discuss strategic moves?
  • quaddoggy
    Another shitshow brought to you by H1-b Visas.
  • teaearlgraycold
    Now this is the kind of wacky shit I want to see happening in corporate America. When are we going to see an action movie-style GPU heist? I want to see whole palettes of GPUs stolen out of box trucks.
  • TheArchitectAut
    [dead]
  • ziiinq
    [dead]
  • aanet
    Congratulations. Now everybody is a suspect.And not just at that AI company. At every AI company.Workplace monitoring was already draconian.../s
  • ChrisArchitect
  • rfgplk
    > We take protecting our technology, data, and people seriously, and as a matter of national importance.What is there to protect? The GPT architecture is publicly known at this point, Anthropic arguably has superior models, there are dozens of other providers who are neck and neck...
  • rvz
    So but OpenAI did it to Apple and they were caught, and now OpenAI doesn't like it when it happens to them?Either way, there goes the false flag and the reason for companies to stop hiring humans over this espionage.
  • clustrfunk
    There’s absolutely no way Abdulrahman did this. This was a setup.
  • wren6991
    They're trying to distil OpenAI employees now. Absolutely shameless
  • mbgerring
    > We discovered a sophisticated recording devicedid you thoughState sponsored intelligence agencies can point a camera at an exterior window and reconstruct dialogue from the vibrations. This was a loose, hand-soldered ESP32. Settle down.