# OpenAI — Disrupting a coordinated model-distillation campaign

- Company: OpenAI (openai.com)
- Announced: 2026-09-30T10:30:00+00:00
- Category: not stated
- Coverage: 10 outlets
- Announcement: no
- Group: covered
- Source: https://openai.com/index/disrupting-a-coordinated-model-distillation-campaign
- Record: https://forck.live/items/15445-disrupting-a-coordinated-model-distillation-campaign
- Subject: GPT / ChatGPT / API

We recently identified and disrupted a coordinated campaign designed to extract protected reasoning from our models, with the earliest observed activity occurring in the first week of July. This activity is consistent with adversarial distillation: the systematic and unauthorized use of one model’s outputs or reasoning to help train, reproduce, or improve another model. Protected reasoning is the model’s internal record for working through a task; extracting it can reveal information withheld from the final answer and help others reproduce the model’s capabilities. The operators did not break our encryption, compromise a database, or gain direct access to stored user conversations. Instead, they manipulated model interactions so that protected reasoning could be reproduced in forms visible to the requester in a coordinated, scaled manner that violated our terms of service. This manipulation is not a vulnerability unique to OpenAI’s models, and we have shared information about it with industry partners through the Frontier Model Forum in order to strengthen collective defenses against adversarial distillation. …

## Around this story

Outlets this record can name and link:

- Quartz: https://qz.com/openai-moonshot-ai-model-reasoning-distillation-100126
- Tom's Hardware — OpenAI says actors linked to China-based Moonshot AI spearheaded a campaign to extract its models’ hidden reasoning — logged 16,000 extraction requests across 4,000 accounts before cutoff: https://tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/openai-says-actors-linked-to-moonshot-ai-spearheaded-a-campaign-to-extract-its-models-hidden-reasoning-logged-attempts-peaked-at-16-000-users-over-two-days
- Wccftech: https://wccftech.com/moonshot-ai-of-kimi-k3-fame-tried-to-crack-openais-encrypted-reasoning-through-16000-requests-bolstering-trump-administrations-distillation-claims
- Unite — OpenAI Disrupts Coordinated Model-Reasoning Extraction Campaign: https://unite.ai/openai-disrupts-coordinated-model-reasoning-extraction-campaign
- Business Today — ChatGPT copied to train Kimi AI? OpenAI makes serious allegations against China’s Moonshot AI: https://businesstoday.in/technology/artificial-intelligence/story/chatgpt-copied-to-train-kimi-ai-openai-makes-serious-allegations-against-chinas-moonshot-ai-559096-2026-10-01
- Tech in Asia: https://techinasia.com/news/openai-moonshot-users-extract-gpt-reasoning-data
- The Independent — OpenAI reveals huge ‘co-ordinated campaign’ to attack ChatGPT: https://the-independent.com/tech/security/chatgpt-openai-moonshot-distillation-b3059668.html
- The Hacker News — OpenAI Disrupts Reasoning Extraction Campaign Linked to Moonshot AI Associates: https://thehackernews.com/2026/10/openai-disrupts-reasoning-extraction.html
- CyberScoop — OpenAI reveals ‘novel’ encryption bypass used in distillation attack: https://cyberscoop.com/openai-moonshot-ai-model-distillation-attack

## Follow-ups

- The Decoder (reported, 1 Oct): OpenAI says it stopped a campaign to steal its models' reasoning, but the trick still worked on Azure — https://forck.live/items/15567-openai-says-it-stopped-a-campaign-to-steal-its-models-reasoning-but-the-trick

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