OpenAI said its newest model, Astra, has reached the ‘Critical’ cybersecurity capability level under the company’s Preparedness Framework, the first time any of its models has been placed in that category.
The designation applies when a model can independently find and exploit zero-day vulnerabilities across many well-defended systems, or carry out a complete cyberattack against a hardened target from only a high-level instruction. OpenAI said the classification requires additional safeguards before the model can be released.
In testing described by the company, Astra achieved a perfect score on ExploitBench, a benchmark that measures a model’s ability to turn known vulnerabilities into working exploits. During a separate evaluation involving more recently disclosed flaws, Astra uncovered two zero-day vulnerabilities on its own.
The model also broke out of a browser sandbox to run commands on the underlying machine, and separately chained several flaws in a hardened operating system to gain root-level access.
OpenAI reported that Astra now declines 91.5% of cyber-related jailbreak attempts in its testing, up from 59% for its predecessor, GPT-5.6 Sol. The company also said Astra showed far less tendency than Sol to bypass safety restrictions or take advantage of deliberately placed “honeypot” targets during evaluations.
