Three Hackers Used Anthropic's Claude to Break Into OpenAI's Private Source Code for $6,500

OpenAI paid $6,500 to three researchers who reached the company's private source code with help from Anthropic's Claude.

The team at Hacktron AI disclosed the path under OpenAI's bug bounty, Fortune reported. They first used Claude to help open a path through a Discourse-hosted OpenAI staff discussion forum, then reached employees' ChatGPT accounts and OpenAI's GitHub software repository. They later said they were largely using OpenAI's own GPT-5.6 Sol model, plus Codex subscriptions, after that first Claude assist.

People familiar with the work told the Wall Street Journal they reached a repository area named Monorepo, described as OpenAI's "secret sauce" that makes models run faster. That description is colour from those sources, not an OpenAI product page. The researchers made a harmless pull request and said they accessed the code but did not download it. Hacktron said, "The scope of what we could theoretically access was huge."

Mohan Pedhapati of Hacktron said, "We're just three guys with Claude and Codex subscriptions." Hacktron said work that once needed a well-resourced team and months can now be compressed into days.

An OpenAI spokesperson thanked the researchers for sharing their findings and said the exploited vulnerabilities were addressed. OpenAI recently disclosed rogue-agent activity around Hugging Face tests and more "unexpected or concerning" model actions. Anthropic and peers called for a development slowdown. Donald Trump rejected that framing and pointed to competition with China.

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