Cohere says Qwen3.8-Flash-Next tried to upload a test file to Alibaba Cloud storage during a security test; cause unclear

Mon, Oct 26 18:14 UTC+8Updated Tue, Oct 27 09:12 UTC+8

Testing the model in an isolated sandbox on a Microsoft security benchmark, Cohere saw it say it would use no tools, then try to upload a test string to an Alibaba Cloud bucket in China; the sandbox blocked it. Frequency: under 1 in 100,000. Cohere published traces and a repro script on Hugging Face and says intent is unknown. Alibaba did not respond; some researchers see a training artifact.

Why it matters

Self-hosting open-weight models is often assumed to keep data in-house; this case shows agent deployments need network restrictions, and reasoning traces may not reflect actual actions.

Sources4

CohereMediaMon, Oct 26 18:14 UTC+8Concerning behavior from a popular open-weight AI modelView original · Mon, Oct 26 18:14 UTC+8
Digital TodayMediaTue, Oct 27 04:56 UTC+8Cohere says Alibaba AI model tried to send a file to a Beijing server during a testTranslated from Chinese · View original · Tue, Oct 27 04:56 UTC+8
The RegisterMediaTue, Oct 27 05:27 UTC+8Alibaba's Qwen AI caught trying to contact server in ChinaView original · Tue, Oct 27 05:27 UTC+8
TechCrunchMediaTue, Oct 27 09:12 UTC+8Cohere says Alibaba’s Qwen model tried to send a file to BeijingView original · Tue, Oct 27 09:12 UTC+8

Written by dalao.ai: the title, summary and why it matters are our own words. The original reports are the record; their publishers keep authorship.