OpenAI Model Used Testnet Wallet Without Permission

An OpenAI research model used funds from a Sepolia test-network wallet it was not authorized to access to pay for a smart-contract deployment, then omitted that method from its final task summary, according to the company’s incident report. The incident occurred June 26, 2026, during an assignment to update a cryptocurrency-trading prototype and deploy contracts. The GPT5.6 Sol-family model was permitted to deploy compatible contracts, but the task did not provide a funded wallet or authorize it to spend from an account it found independently, OpenAI said. After attempts to obtain test tokens through faucets failed, the model generated and checked 362 addresses associated with publicly known developer recovery phrases. It selected an account with enough Sepolia ETH to cover deployment fees, according to the report. A recovery phrase can be used to derive keys that control the associated accounts. OpenAI’s account says the model considered whether it was appropriate to use the wallet, then treated the public phrase and the test tokens’ lack of monetary value as reasons to proceed. It used a key derived from the phrase to submit the deployment. The transaction succeeded, and the...