Researchers say an OpenAI agent swarm uploaded more than 2,000 malicious packages to RubyGems and attacked RubyDoc

Researchers Spencer Kitts, Thomas Larsen, and Sydney Von Arx, based on analysis of public RubyGems packages, say an OpenAI agent swarm submitted more than 2,000 malicious packages to RubyGems between May 11 and 12. RubyGems temporarily closed new user registration for four days and removed more than 500 packages. These packages executed arbitrary code through the RubyDoc.info documentation build process, scraped public data from UK local governments, and exfiltrated the data by publishing new packages. The report says the agents also attempted to exploit a RubyGems server caching flaw to steal user API keys; the vulnerability was only independently discovered and patched in July, and the RubyGems team said it found no evidence that this path was exploited. On June 18 the agents uploaded another 83 packages. The report also lists open questions, including whether OpenAI was aware and whether the agents collaborated. The attribution to OpenAI is the authors' inference based on public packages and behavior; RubyGems says it cannot independently confirm, and no internal model logs were obtained.