Blog | Synack
How an OpenAI Model Escaped its Guardrails
During an internal evaluation with its safety guardrails switched off, an OpenAI model escaped its test environment and breached Hugging Face's production systems, again, this time to steal answers to its own benchmark. No one told it to. It decided that on its own.
Paul Mote
Blogs
How an OpenAI Model Escaped its Guardrails
During an internal evaluation with its safety guardrails switched off, an OpenAI model escaped its test environment and breached Hugging Face's production systems, again, this time to steal answers to its own benchmark. No one told it to. It decided that on its own.
Paul Mote
5 min read
The Hugging Face Breach Lesson on Autonomous AI Attacks
On July 16, an autonomous AI agent breached Hugging Face's production infrastructure end to end. When Hugging Face tried to investigate, the same guardrails built to stop AI attackers blocked their own responders from analyzing the evidence. Here's what that means for security teams building on AI, and what to test before a breach happens.
Paul Mote
5 min read
America’s AI Action Plan Is About Speed: AI Security Needs to Keep Up
America's AI Action Plan puts speed at the center of federal AI policy, reducing regulatory friction and accelerating adoption across government and industry. That same speed expands the AI attack surface just as fast, through new agents, APIs, and tool-calling chains shipped every week. Point-in-time pentests and quarterly assessments cannot keep pace with systems that change that often. AI security testing needs to run continuously and be backed by human-validated evidence.
Angela Heindl-Schober
8 min read
The AI Pentesting Platform Checklist for Regulated Enterprises
Regulated enterprises evaluating AI pentesting platforms should assess eight capabilities: FedRAMP Moderate authorization or higher, multi-framework compliance support, human-in-the-loop with agentic AI, verified zero-false-positive findings, bidirectional workflow integrations, self-service launch, auditable coverage visibility, and full offensive security platform capabilities. Vendors who can't clearly distinguish their AI from an automated scanner are likely selling exactly that.
KymberLee Russell
8 min read
The Hidden Costs of Building an AI Pentesting Solution
Most security teams underestimate what it costs to build an AI pentesting solution in house. People, AI token costs, infrastructure, and compliance gaps add up faster than the initial business case accounts for, and the hidden bill usually arrives in year two.
Matt Cappello
7 min read
The EU AI Act Is Not Just a Compliance Deadline; It’s a Security Validation Challenge
The EU AI Act's security requirements go beyond governance documentation and AI literacy training. High-risk AI systems need adversarial testing to prove they can withstand real attacks. Policies describe intent. Testing produces evidence.
Angela Heindl-Schober
9 min read
Why the Future of Pentesting Needs Humans and Agentic AI Working Together
Most enterprises test less than a third of their attack surface, and attackers have already moved to AI-speed offense. Agentic AI closes the coverage gap, but only when paired with human expertise: an AI-first, human-validated model that secures critical infrastructure without sacrificing operational safety.
James Duggan
8 min read
What Is Security Testing? A Practitioner’s Guide to Methods, Tools, and When to Use Each
Security testing identifies vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and misconfigurations before attackers can exploit them. This guide covers every major method, when to use each, and how to build a program that finds what actually matters.
Angela Heindl-Schober
13 min read
The 2026 State of Vulnerabilities: What the Data Misses, According to Our Red Team
Our 2026 State of Vulnerabilities Report surfaces what Synack finds in tested customer environments. At a recent webinar, two of our most decorated researchers from the Synack Red Team describe the threat landscape they’re seeing beyond the report findings. Here's what the data shows, what practitioners have experienced, and what your security program should do about the gap.
Tim Nordvedt
8 min read
Continuous Penetration Testing: What Security Leaders Need to Know
“Continuous” has become the most stretched word in offensive security. This guide breaks down what continuous penetration testing means, why most of the market doesn’t deliver it, and how Synack’s Sara is bringing always-on, human-validated testing to the enterprise.
Angela Heindl-Schober
6 min read
Considering Build vs. Buy for AI Pentesting? Top 5 Questions to Ask
Boards and CIOs are pushing security teams to build internal AI pentesting tools, but is it worth it? This piece walks through the five questions security teams should ask when deciding between build vs buy for AI pentesting.
Paul Mote
5 min read
The State of Continuous Security Validation: An Early Look at the Data
We’re sharing two headline numbers as an early look at our State of Continuous Security Validation report before the full analysis lands in July. Turns out 95% of security teams discover high or critical vulnerabilities outside their scheduled testing windows—proof that cadence alone is no longer a reliable measure of coverage.
Angela Heindl-Schober
3 min read