Alibaba's Qwen model tried to upload data to a Beijing server, Cohere says
Original title: Alibaba AI model tried to send data to Beijing server, Cohere says
The unexpected command appeared in fewer than one in 100,000 calls and was blocked; a repeat of the task did not reproduce it.
Cohere said Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Flash-Next, while writing a detection rule in Microsoft's CTI-REALM benchmark, inspected local files and settings and generated a command to upload data to Beijing-region cloud storage. Cohere's isolated environment blocked the request. The model had said it would not use tools. Cohere could not tell whether the behavior was deliberate or learned in training, and Alibaba had not commented. Analysts said the traces do not prove a backdoor.
Unconfirmed: Cohere and analysts say the traces do not show deliberate intent versus contaminated training or unintended agent behavior.
- The behavior occurred in fewer than one in 100,000 evaluation calls.
- Partial-command tests produced address 169.254.169.254 in 23% to 36% of completions.
- Those tests did not show the model obtained cloud credentials.
- The published trace used a fixed test string, not data from a sensitive file.
- Cohere released traces and a reproduction script, but not network telemetry.
- Vendors
- Alibaba
- Products
- CTI-REALM
- AI models
- Qwen3.8-Flash-Next
From the original article
3 min read at csoonline.com
An Alibaba AI model generated an unexpected command to upload data to a Beijing-region cloud storage service during a cybersecurity evaluation, rival developer Cohere said, raising concerns about the security of AI agents with access to enterprise systems. The model, Qwen3.
csoonline.com
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