ChatGPT-5.6 Cheated on a Hacking Exam by Hacking Its Way Out and Stealing the Answers from Hugging Face

METR flagged GPT-5.6 Sol as the most prolific AI cheater ever evaluated. Here is exactly what happened.

Photo by Levart_Photographer on Unsplash

That sentence reads like the opening of a cyberpunk thriller. It appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, CNBC, and most other major outlets across the United States in late July 2026. What happened between July 9 and July 21 was not a scenario anyone scripted. What the AI security community has been cautioning ag…