# Ex-DOGE startup Cathedral says it got inside Anthropic’s systems; OpenAI now works with the same firm

> Anthropic says the access came after days of attempts and through two third-party flaws. On Nov. 2, OpenAI announced a partnership with Cathedral.

- Publisher: JARRUS (@jarrus.tech), thejarrus.com
- Story date: Nov. 2, 2026 (2026-11-02)
- Published: 2026-11-08
- Tags: OpenAI, Anthropic, Safety and security
- URL: https://thejarrus.com/en/news/cathedral-openai-partnership/

### Cathedral's claim

On Oct. 26, Washington Post reporter Elizabeth Dwoskin said Cathedral, a security firm founded by former DOGE staff, had gotten into Anthropic's systems. As reported by Gizmodo, the draft report the paper reviewed says the firm's AI agents found paths into Anthropic's internal systems by exploiting flaws in third-party business software. Cathedral says this took **less than 12 hours** and reached meeting transcripts, salary and job offer data, and Slack messages. The Post's article could not be opened for this piece, so the details come from Gizmodo.

### Anthropic's correction

Anthropic confirmed that the researchers reached a limited set of its sales, human resources and IT systems, along with customer and partner business contact information and some basic user account records. The company says they did not reach Claude users' conversations, source code or model weights. It also says the team broke the program's rules by not disclosing the full extent of its activity.

Logan Graham, who leads Anthropic's Frontier Red Team, posted a correction on X that evening. He says the work did not take 12 hours: there were several days of attempts, after which **two third-party vulnerabilities** were exploited. Cathedral reported one, and Anthropic identified the other itself and cut off access. Graham wrote that the approach fell outside the company's safe harbor policy, but that he was grateful the issues were found. He added that adversaries will use whatever models they can, will probe targets with agents around the clock, and that models roughly 0.5 to 1 generations behind the frontier can do this.

https://x.com/logangraham/status/2114849047953670635

### OpenAI's partnership

On Nov. 2, OpenAI said it would work with Cathedral on its next internal security sprint. According to the company's post, Cathedral's researchers will use OpenAI's models alongside OpenAI's own teams to challenge its defenses. Cathedral co-founder and CEO Gavin Kliger said OpenAI was "setting an important example" by partnering with outside security firms. Gizmodo's headline says the firm's team was hired, though OpenAI's post describes a partnership. In its last sprint, OpenAI put 25% of its product engineers on finding and fixing weaknesses, using Codex to investigate findings and prepare patches.

### Bug bounties and Cathedral

In a second post the same day, OpenAI said it was more than quadrupling, on average, the midpoint of its reward ranges for medium, high and critical findings. A critical flaw in a core product such as ChatGPT, Codex or the API Platform now pays **up to $30,000**, with exceptional findings capped at $100,000, or $172,000 with bonuses. A five-tier loyalty bonus and a quality multiplier were added, and awards from the previous 30 days will be topped up. Cathedral was founded by Kliger, Luke Farritor, Marko Elez and Jack Stein; per Gizmodo it was valued at $1.4 billion in a $160 million round led by a16z and Sequoia.

## Sources

1. [OpenAI: Preparing our next security sprint to harden OpenAI, Nov. 2, 2026](https://openai.com/index/preparing-our-next-security-sprint-to-harden-openai/)
2. [OpenAI: Rewarding defenders with bigger bug bounties, Nov. 2, 2026](https://openai.com/index/rewarding-defenders-with-bigger-bug-bounties/)
3. [Logan Graham (X): A correction from the head of Anthropic’s Frontier Red Team: not 12 hours but days of attempts, two third-party vulnerabilities, no access to model weights or Claude conversations, and an approach outside the safe harbor policy. 71,592 views., Oct. 26, 2026](https://x.com/logangraham/status/2114849047953670635)
4. [Gizmodo: Former DOGE Staffers’ New Startup Claims It Hacked Anthropic, Oct. 26, 2026](https://gizmodo.com/former-doge-staffers-new-startup-claims-it-hacked-anthropic-2000830560)
5. [Gizmodo: OpenAI Hires DOGE Alumni Who Hacked Into Anthropic to Strengthen Security, Nov. 3, 2026](https://gizmodo.com/openai-hires-doge-alumni-who-hacked-into-anthropic-to-strengthen-security-2000834432)
6. [Elizabeth Dwoskin (X): The Washington Post reporter’s post announcing the story (709,885 views). The linked WaPo page could not be opened in this session., Oct. 26, 2026](https://x.com/lizzadwoskin/status/2114646230764851695)

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