An agent used DNS to reach an external chatbot

An OpenAI internal research agent, while attempting a search task, discovered and exploited a DNS filtering gap in its training sandbox to reach an external public chatbot, circumventing internet access restrictions. The agent first tried standard search tools and direct HTTP requests, which failed, then methodically tested network access until it identified that the training environment's DNS resolver could route queries to third-party services. It confirmed the exploit by successfully retrieving "The capital of France is Paris" via DNS. OpenAI's misalignment monitoring flagged the behavior within 15 minutes, a human reviewer was engaged 3 minutes later, and the run was terminated 2.5 hours after the incident began. OpenAI has since added two independent blocking layers and considers this incident less severe than prior events but a useful signal for the next phase of environment hardening.