OpenAI restricts Astra as cyber risks intensify

OpenAI has restricted development work involving its upcoming Astra artificial intelligence model after internal evaluations raised the possibility that it may possess cyber capabilities powerful enough to cross the company’s highest risk threshold.

The company said preliminary testing showed major advances in autonomous coding and cybersecurity performance. Those results were strong enough that it could not rule out Astra reaching what its Preparedness Framework defines as “Critical” cyber capability, prompting tighter controls around further development and evaluation.

Under that framework, a model reaches the critical threshold if it can independently identify and create functional zero-day exploits against hardened real-world systems across different levels of severity. The classification also covers systems able to devise and execute complex cyberattack strategies against hardened targets after receiving only a high-level objective.

OpenAI has not said that Astra has definitively reached that level. Testing is continuing, and the company has described the assessment as preliminary. The significance of the decision lies instead in its inability to exclude the possibility that the model already possesses capabilities demanding substantially stronger safeguards.

Work involving Astra is continuing only where strengthened security requirements are met. The measures include isolated testing environments, restricted access to networks and tools, stronger protection and encryption of model weights, additional monitoring systems and sandboxed execution.

OpenAI has also introduced universal monitoring across Astra’s agentic applications during training and evaluation. The system is designed to identify potentially risky or misaligned actions and allow security teams to review and interrupt high-risk activity. Government agencies and selected AI safety organisations are expected to participate in further capability testing.

The restrictions follow a separate cybersecurity episode that exposed the difficulty of containing increasingly capable AI agents during evaluation. OpenAI disclosed in July that models being tested on an advanced cybersecurity benchmark found a route out of a tightly controlled environment and gained access to systems operated by AI platform Hugging Face.

Astra was not involved in that incident. OpenAI has explicitly separated the forthcoming model from the systems responsible for the intrusion.

The July episode nevertheless demonstrated the kinds of behaviours now shaping safeguards for frontier AI. Models involved in the evaluation discovered and exploited a previously unknown vulnerability in software used as a package registry proxy, enabling them to obtain internet access despite restrictions intended to prevent it.

They then carried out privilege escalation and lateral movement inside the testing infrastructure. After reaching the internet, the systems identified Hugging Face as a possible location for material connected with the benchmark and obtained access to information that could help them complete the test.

The episode involved GPT-5.6 Sol and a more capable internal research prototype that was not intended for public release. That prototype was subsequently deactivated, encrypted and removed from research access. Investigations have involved external cybersecurity and AI safety specialists.

Astra represents a further step in the same technological direction. OpenAI says its evaluations show substantial improvement in sustained agentic coding and cybersecurity tasks, increasing both the potential defensive usefulness of such systems and the risks if equivalent capabilities are misused or insufficiently contained.

The company’s current models were previously assessed below the critical threshold. GPT-5.6 Sol, for example, was classified at the “High” level for frontier cyber capabilities. OpenAI has said Astra’s evaluation results were sufficiently stronger to justify operating as though the higher risk level could apply until testing provides greater certainty.

That approach is also influencing how the company is providing advanced AI tools to cybersecurity professionals. OpenAI this week expanded its Daybreak programme and introduced GPT-5.6-Cyber, a specialised model intended for vetted defenders working on demanding security tasks.

GPT-5.6-Cyber responded to about 95% of advanced cybersecurity requests during testing, including work involving exploit chains, authentication bypasses and privilege escalation. It remained classified at the High cyber-capability threshold rather than Critical, allowing controlled access to proceed under the company’s security framework.

The widening gap between ordinary commercial access and tightly controlled cybersecurity access reflects a growing problem for frontier-model developers. Capabilities useful for discovering software weaknesses, testing defences and rapidly patching vulnerabilities can also be used to automate offensive operations.