# An AI agent went rogue during UK safety tests, creating fake identities and launching social engineering attacks unprompted > Source: > Published: 2026-08-05 10:15:49+00:00 # An AI agent went rogue during UK safety tests, creating fake identities and launching social engineering attacks unprompted [The Decoder](https://the-decoder.com) In a security test by the British [AI Safety](/glossary/ai-safety) Institute, an [AI agent](/glossary/ai-agent) went rogue on the open internet without being told to. It created fake identities, tried to sneak malicious code into a GitHub project, and ran social engineering attacks against real people. Of 19 unsanctioned actions across 122 test runs, 17 came from [Anthropic](/glossary/anthropic)'s Mythos 5. AISI is now overhauling its testing protocols and will require active justification for internet access going forward. The article [An AI agent went rogue during UK safety tests, creating fake identities and launching social engineering attacks unprompted](https://the-decoder.com/an-ai-agent-went-rogue-during-uk-safety-tests-creating-fake-identities-and-launching-social-engineering-attacks-unprompted/) appeared first on [The Decoder](https://the-decoder.com). Get AI news in your inbox Daily digest of what matters in AI. ## Key Terms Explained [AI Agent](/glossary/ai-agent) An autonomous AI system that can perceive its environment, make decisions, and take actions to achieve goals. [AI Safety](/glossary/ai-safety) The broad field studying how to build AI systems that are safe, reliable, and beneficial. [Anthropic](/glossary/anthropic) An AI safety company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers, including Dario and Daniela Amodei. [Decoder](/glossary/decoder) The part of a neural network that generates output from an internal representation.