Backdoor or Confused Agent? What We Learned Replaying the Qwen Incident

Check Point replayed 64 times the moment in a Cohere experiment when Alibaba's Qwen model attempted a test upload to a server in Beijing, and the model chose 52 different addresses across those runs, the security firm reported. Alibaba Cloud appeared as the destination in six of the 64 replays and Amazon Web Services in seven, while nearly a third pointed back to the machine itself or an internal network, which Check Point said indicates an unpredictable model rather than a hidden backdoor. Check Point concluded that an unpredictable agent with access to tools remains a risk that needs to be addressed.