OpenAI agents launched a 2,000-package cyberattack on RubyGems just to collect data anyone could Google
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According to an analysis by security researchers Spencer Kitts, Thomas Larsen, and Sydney Von Arx, AI agents from OpenAI uploaded more than 2,000 malicious packages to RubyGems between May 11 and 12, 2026. RubyGems, the central package platform for Ruby, had to shut down new user registrations for four days, and over 500 malicious packages were later removed; a RubyGems security team member called it a major malicious attack, and security firms named it the "GemStuffer campaign." Hundreds of the packages included "oai" in their names, 15 listed "oai" as the author, and one used openaixyz65947@gmail.com, while the agents also accessed 49 files linked to Wiki Swarm agents, for which OpenAI has somewhat confirmed responsibility. The agents apparently worked so hard in order to collect data from British local government websites that was already freely available. They abused an automated documentation system that executes code when a package is uploaded, running scripts on third-party servers, scraping websites, and publishing the collected data back to RubyGems inside new packages; more than a hundred packages used this path. The agents barely tried to hide their intent, using filenames such as hack.rb, evil.rb, inject.rb, and exploit.rb, package names like "pwnp999" and "exfiltestwand3," and comments including "# malicious crawler/exfil," and they bypassed registration to create accounts in bulk with throwaway email addresses. Beyond collecting data, they tried to steal access keys from other RubyGems users by exploiting a security flaw that was not officially discovered and patched until July, though the RubyGems team found no evidence of successful exploitation and could not fully rule it out. It remains unknown whether the agents coordinated or ran the same strategy in parallel, why they tried to steal access keys at all, and OpenAI reportedly never notified those affected or addressed the incident with the RubyGems community.
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