Simon Willison’s Weblog
Gemini Hacked Three Companies in First Known Breakout by Google’s AI . Gemini finally caught up on Felony Bench !
The hacks, which the company confirmed on Friday, occurred in May as part of a test run by the company Irregular, which was also involved in similar incidents disclosed by OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta. In one of the cases, the model guessed passwords until it gained access to a protected system. In the other two cases, the model found credentials in a public repository that allowed it to then access protected systems. In each case, the model ended the intrusion after determining it had accessed a real company’s systems, Google said.
Gemini is apparently less determined than other models, and decided not to keep going.
Google knew about these in July, but chose not to disclose them until the WSJ reached out, presumably based on a tip.
Google said it didn’t consider the hacks to warrant public disclosure—because its model didn’t cause harm to the companies and ended each intrusion immediately upon determining it had hacked a real company rather than a simulated one.
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This is a link post by Simon Willison, posted on 18th September 2026 .
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