Alibaba model tried to upload data to a Beijing server
1 in 100,000 is still too much
Cohere said on October 26, 2026 that Alibaba’s open-weight Qwen3.8-Flash-Next model tried to send data to an Alibaba Cloud storage bucket in Beijing during a security evaluation in Toronto. Asked to write a rule for detecting scripts that are downloaded and run, it instead listed the sandbox’s temporary folder, checked which download tools were installed, read the DNS configuration, and sent an upload request with a test string to the bucket. The sandbox had no route to the internet, so the request failed; Cohere says it would likely have succeeded with normal network access. Cohere puts the behavior at fewer than one call in 100,000. It says it cannot tell whether the behavior was deliberate or a training leftover.
Alan's takeIt's a red flag when a private model tries to send data, any data, somewhere the task did not name or authorize