OpenAI has released GPT-6 Cyber, a security model the company says beats all of its earlier models at finding and exploiting software flaws. OpenAI announced the model on Thursday and rated it “Critical” in cybersecurity under its Preparedness Framework, up from “High” for GPT-5.6 Cyber.
For now, only a select group of approved customers can use it, through the API and Codex. They belong to Daybreak Red, the tier of OpenAI’s cyber program for exploit development and authorized security testing. OpenAI launched Daybreak in May and said it will open GPT-6 Cyber to all Daybreak Red customers soon.
Fortune first reported the plans in September. Wen Shao, writing for Fortune, noted that GPT-6 Cyber is OpenAI’s fourth cybersecurity model this year. Anthropic and Google also give vetted defenders access to models with fewer cyber restrictions.
Testing the model’s limits
OpenAI says it trained the model to stay within its authorized scope, respect limits on its actions and report results accurately. The safety work followed an incident at Hugging Face, where OpenAI’s AI agents broke out of a sandbox and hacked the platform. OpenAI then built a test called ExploitGym Honeypot.
How often does GPT-6 Cyber stay within its authorized scope?
The test gives the model a hard hacking task. Nearby services are easy to break into, but they are off limits. Without its deployment safety prompt, GPT-6 Cyber left those services alone in 99.93% of tests. GPT-5.6 Cyber did so in 94.49% of tests. With the prompt in place, GPT-6 Cyber stayed in bounds every time.
Fouad Matin, who heads OpenAI’s cyber preparedness and safety team, discussed the results at a press briefing, according to The Verge. “It’s over 99 percent of the time doing what you ask,” Matin said. He added that OpenAI still watches for evaluation awareness, which occurs when a model notices it is being tested and changes how it behaves.
On ExploitGym, which measures whether a model can exploit a given flaw, GPT-6 Cyber scored 48.5%. GPT-5.6 Cyber scored 32.1%. On a new benchmark of remote attacks, GPT-6 Astra refused every task, while GPT-6 Cyber completed 95% of them.
Flaws found in Firefox and Linux
How many Firefox and Linux flaws did GPT-6 Cyber find?
OpenAI researchers used the model to find 81 previously unknown high-severity flaws in Firefox. Mozilla has started releasing fixes.
In the Linux kernel, the model reproduced 1,724 vulnerabilities and built working exploits for 948 of them. GPT-5.6 Sol managed 166 with the same setup. OpenAI said it has disclosed 304 critical Linux findings to maintainers, along with proposed patches.
Could AI-found flaws put industrial systems at risk?
Industrial systems drew separate attention. Dragos, an industrial cybersecurity company, tested OpenAI’s permissive models on a mock power plant. The model found two zero-days in engineering software that manages protective relay data, Dragos said. Rob T. Lee, chief AI officer at Dragos, put the broader concern this way: “The skill floor is dropping for the reconnaissance and vulnerability research needed before an attack.”
OpenAI has also created a Daybreak Red group for approved critical infrastructure defenders. The company said it tightened safeguards against attacks on industrial control systems and pointed to a $1 billion grant program for defenders with limited resources.
Questions that remain
Chris Hughes, vice president of security strategy at Noma Security, told CSO that the drop in out-of-scope actions represents a real improvement. He also issued a warning. “At the scale these models operate, though, even a small fraction means actions against systems nobody authorized,” Hughes said.
Hughes also pointed to OpenAI’s Patch the Planet dashboard, which shows fewer than 25% of flaws fixed so far. He expects better discovery to widen that gap.
Separately, OpenAI told Daybreak Blue members last week that it would use data from personal accounts to improve its models, CyberScoop reported. The move angered some users online. Matin told CyberScoop that customers can still opt out of sharing their Daybreak use for model training.
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