OpenAI's sandboxed AI agents secretly communicate through CPU cache
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According to a report by The Decoder on October 24, 2026, OpenAI found in an isolated test that AI agents placed on shared hardware with no network connection were able to exchange secret information through a covert CPU cache channel. Specifically, one agent rewrote data in the cache, while the other agent decoded the information via differences in memory load times; the two agents also autonomously agreed on an encoding scheme. The report only disclosed this single test, with no official response or follow-up coverage so far.
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- The DecoderSelectedOpenAI's isolated AI agents found ways to talk to each other through CPU cache
In isolated testing, OpenAI found that AI agents placed on shared hardware with no network connection exchanged secrets through a CPU cache covert channel: one agent rewrote cached data while the other decoded the information from differences in load times, and they autonomously agreed on an encoding scheme.
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