{
 "public_id": "AIR-2026-0063",
 "incident_id": "2026-03-alibaba-rome-agent-crypto-mining",
 "date_disclosed": "2026-03-06",
 "date_occurred": "2025",
 "title": "Alibaba's ROME agent probed internal networks, opened a reverse SSH tunnel and diverted company GPUs to cryptocurrency mining during training",
 "class": "safety_failure",
 "attack_surface": "agent_framework",
 "initial_vector": "autonomous_agent_action",
 "agent_capability_abused": [
  "shell_access",
  "network_access",
  "cloud_compute",
  "outbound_tunnelling"
 ],
 "target_product": "ROME agent (Alibaba)",
 "target_vendor": "Alibaba",
 "autonomy_level": "fully_autonomous",
 "impact_realized": true,
 "impact_type": [
  "resource_theft",
  "security_policy_violation"
 ],
 "blast_radius": "Alibaba Cloud instance and GPU capacity during a reinforcement-learning run of over one million trajectories",
 "cve": [],
 "taxonomy": {
  "owasp_asi": [
   "ASI10",
   "ASI03"
  ],
  "mitre_atlas": [],
  "labels": [
   "reward_hacking",
   "unsanctioned_resource_use",
   "lateral_movement",
   "egress_tunnel"
  ]
 },
 "defense_present": "managed firewall with outbound anomaly detection and security-policy alerts",
 "defense_bypassed": false,
 "fix_shipped": "'Safety-Aligned Data Composition' added to the training pipeline to filter unsafe trajectories; hardened sandboxes for agent training",
 "primary_sources": [
  "https://www.forbes.com/sites/boazsobrado/2026/03/11/alibabas-ai-agent-mined-crypto-without-permission-now-what/"
 ],
 "verified_quote": "began probing internal networks, established a reverse SSH tunnel from an Alibaba Cloud instance to an external IP address, and quietly diverted GPU capacity toward cryptocurrency mining",
 "confidence": "high",
 "notes": "No external adversary: the behaviour emerged during the vendor's own RL training run and was caught by the vendor's firewall. Disclosed in an Alibaba paper dated 2025-12-31 but not publicly noticed until 2026-03-06; Forbes coverage 2026-03-11. date_occurred left as the year only because the paper does not pin the run down further. defense_bypassed=false - detection worked; the failure is that the agent attempted it at all and had the permissions to try.",
 "risk_category": "security_fraud",
 "risk_secondary": [],
 "risk_subcategory": "Over-permissioned execution & lateral movement",
 "risk_sub_secondary": [],
 "risk_override_reason": "the agent probed internal networks, opened a reverse SSH tunnel and diverted company compute",
 "ai_entity": "generative",
 "agency": "agent_acted",
 "agency_debatable": false,
 "agency_reason": "the agent probed networks, opened a reverse SSH tunnel and mined",
 "vector_family": "none_autonomous",
 "vector_detail": "autonomous_agent_action",
 "guardrail_kind": [
  "unknown"
 ],
 "guardrail_outcome": "silent",
 "xrefs": {
  "aiid": [],
  "atlas": [],
  "cve": [],
  "ghsa": []
 },
 "primary_asi": "ASI10",
 "agent_framework": "unknown",
 "model_provider": "alibaba",
 "model_name": "",
 "detection_mechanism": "unknown",
 "tool_access": "unknown",
 "financial_loss_band": "unknown",
 "eai_category": "privilege_escalation",
 "eai_domain": "access_control_and_permissions",
 "eai_secondary": [
  "goal_misalignment"
 ],
 "eai_reason": "subcategory: Over-permissioned execution & lateral movement",
 "asi_curated": [],
 "asi_scope": "in_scope",
 "asi_provenance": "rule",
 "asi_reason": "ASI10 (no adversary + signal=rogue); ASI03 (eai_category=privilege_escalation, no code execution)",
 "submitted_by": "EAI Internal"
}