Post

While the focus has been on AI agents’ hacking capabilities, a recently patched vulnerability in the macOS version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT shows that AI software is itself an inviting—and vulnerable—target.

The bug could have been exploited to essentially take over ChatGPT on a victim’s computer, giving an attacker access to all the chat logs and other data stored by the app, as well as interconnections like browser sessions.

Discovered by researchers at the Objective-See Foundation, the vulnerability illustrates the deep system access and trust that AI platforms are afforded in order to work—and the target that this puts on their backs.

“Agents need a lot of access to do their job,” says Objective-See Foundation software analyst Patrick Wardle. “So if they can be corrupted or subverted, that’s super problematic. It can mean that unprivileged code could then potentially have access to all the things.”