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by kadoban14 hours ago |
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upvoteby otterley12 hours ago|
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IAAL (not legal advice, consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction). You really do not want to pen-test a target without their permission. If you're identified as a culprit, the Feds will shove the CFAA so far up your ass you'll need a proctologist.
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upvoteby wpasc11 hours ago|
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as a lawyer, can you speculate as to why anthropic/openai aren't facing many or any consequences for their agents? I'm not asking in a "grab the pitchforks" way. more out of genuine curiosity as my uninformed recollection of the CFAA is as you describe it.
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upvoteby otterley11 hours ago|
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The 9th Circuit Court of appeals recently published this that is somewhat related (Amazon v. Perplexity): https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/26-144...

Look at pages 10-17 to see how the law is evolving here.

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upvoteby victor900010 hours ago|
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In Perplexity's case everything is getting routed through the user's browser, so there is no server to server communication between Perplexity and Amazon, thus no CFAA unauthorized access was established. However, Anthropic and OpenAI did not use the pattern of routing through authorized parties, so I don't think this opinion gives them any cover.
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upvoteby silisili8 hours ago|
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The important bit to me is that they consider the agent running as an extension of the user. So the user is visiting Amazon, not Perplexity.

From that lens, that feels like users could be held liable for what these hacking agents are doing. Which in some cases probably makes sense, but certainly not all.

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upvoteby otterley7 hours ago|
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In which cases wouldn’t it make sense?
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upvoteby silisili7 hours ago|
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In cases where the user is not asking the agent to hack anything specifically, but a poor or ambiguous query sets the agent off.

I've seen plenty of cases of Claude having an action blocked so trying tons of workarounds to accomplish its goal, I could easily see it doing this on something more broad.

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upvoteby otterley4 hours ago|
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Depending on the circumstances, failure to control your agent could be considered gross negligence and put you at risk of criminal or civil liability. Be mindful!
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upvoteby nrmitchi9 hours ago|
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There is also the big difference here between anthropic/openai maybe being negligent, but did not purposely instruct agents to go commit crimes.

The service that this whole thread is about is explicitly a "hacking agent", designed explicitly to try to hack things, and was then pointed at a third-party (seemingly without their permission).

Anthropic/OpenAI can reasonably claim that they had no intent and are trying to stop it. OP here did this explicitly and purposely.

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upvoteby oasisbob6 hours ago|
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I never thought I'd be on the side of advocating for a strengthened CFAA, but the mens rea requirement here seems really problematic in the age of agents.
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upvoteby nrmitchi6 hours ago|
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In terms of negligence use (openai, anthropic), ya, I agree, and we really need some consideration of "reasonable expectation" of the outcome.

In terms of "We wrote a hacking agent designed only for hacking and sell it as a self-hacking service and then pointing it at someone else and omg can you believe what it did we had no intention of hacking" sense, I don't think that's really applicable.

The mens rea is explicitly there and it's not valid for them to try to hide behind an "agent".

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upvoteby nrmitchi9 hours ago|
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> They didn't break in. They found a key that their neighbor dropped and returned it.

Ya, returned it after poking through all of the drawers and iterating through business information that they found.

There is a white-hat line that OP very clearly crossed here.

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