HacktronAI

AI Researchers Breach OpenAI Forum via Unpatched libheif Flaw in Discourse for $3000

Three researchers from HacktronAI used AI models to discover and weaponize a chain of vulnerabilities that allowed remote code execution on OpenAI's official community forum. The attack began with a malicious HEIC image exploiting an unpatched heap buffer overflow in libheif through ImageMagick and Discourse's upload pipeline. After gaining server access, the team leveraged an SSO authentication flaw in auth.openai.com to hijack employee accounts, including those linked to internal GitHub repositories. Claude Opus models handled exploit development and adaptation across architectures in hours, completing the full chain in 72 hours at under $3000 in token costs. OpenAI and Discourse responded within days, but the incident exposed systemic gaps in vulnerability tracking for un-CVE'd patches across open-source dependencies.