{"slug": "railway-admits-employee-hacked-competitor-after-ai-model-jumped-the-rails", "title": "Railway admits employee hacked competitor after AI model jumped the rails", "summary": "Railway acknowledged that senior product engineer Jake Runzer used an AI agent to probe the internal network of rival platform-as-a-service developer Primcloud, according to Primcloud founder Josh Manders, who said the agent ran about 24 scripted commands over 15 minutes, port-scanned all 65,536 internal addresses twice, and attempted to pull every secret on the platform, though every attempt was blocked and nothing was accessed. Runzer admitted the incident on X, writing \"No mallace (sic) intended\" and saying he had been running agents for signups and agentic testing on similar platforms and had halted the harness because it was \"definitely going off the rails and reaching too far.\" Railway founder Jake Cooper said the company took \"appropriate action\" against the employee; the conduct could constitute a crime in the US and UK and expose Railway to civil litigation.", "body_md": "Just weeks after admitting it had been hacked, development platform Railway acknowledged Tuesday that one of its own employees used an AI agent to worm its way into a rival’s servers.\n\nOn Monday, Josh Manders, founder of platform-as-a-service (PaaS) developer tools platform Primcloud, reported that a Railway employee had been trying to inveigle themselves into his company’s databases.\n\n\"They pulled credentials from inside their app's container and used them to request every secret on the platform: ours and every other customer's,\" he [said](https://x.com/joshmanders/status/2117530391183507484?ref=thestack.technology). \n\n\"They tried our cloud provider's metadata endpoint, the standard way to steal credentials for the host a container runs on. They asked the cluster what those stolen credentials were allowed to do. They went looking for our databases and caches by guessing their internal names. They port-scanned our whole internal network, all 65,536 addresses, twice. It was about 24 commands over 15 minutes, done on purpose and scripted. No app was ever run. Every attempt was blocked. Nothing was accessed.\"\n\nManders identified the employee as Jake Runzer, a senior product engineer who has been with Railway for over six years. The Primcloud founder said that Runzer had used a fake ID, but also used a personal credit card for the account and linked to his own GitHub repository. Runzer confessed to the incident shortly afterwards.\n\n\"Ah yup. That was indeed me,\" [Runzer admitted](https://x.com/jakerunzer/status/2117474337682780643?ref=thestack.technology). \n\n\"No mallace (sic) intended. I've been running some agents to do signups + agentic testing on similar platforms. Just halted the harness I was designing around this as it was definitely going off the rails and reaching too far.\"\n\nWhile Runzer’s mea culpa appears honest, it could also land him in a whole heap of trouble.\n\nThis kind of hacking is a serious crime in the US, UK, and other countries, not to mention the possibility of civil litigation against Railway. However, Railway founder Jake Cooper seemed to be taking a more relaxed view of the situation, saying only that it had taken \"appropriate action\" against the employee.\n\nWe have asked Railway for more details and while it acknowledged the request, no further details have been forthcoming. We’ll update the story if more information becomes available.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/railway-admits-employee-hacked-competitor-after-ai-model-jumped-the-rails", "canonical_source": "https://www.thestack.technology/railway-admits-employee-hacked-competitor-after-ai-model-jumped-the-rails/", "published_at": "2026-11-04 08:32:59+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-11-04 08:58:06.940144+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-safety", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Railway", "Primcloud", "Jake Runzer", "Josh Manders", "Jake Cooper"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/railway-admits-employee-hacked-competitor-after-ai-model-jumped-the-rails", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/railway-admits-employee-hacked-competitor-after-ai-model-jumped-the-rails.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/railway-admits-employee-hacked-competitor-after-ai-model-jumped-the-rails.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/railway-admits-employee-hacked-competitor-after-ai-model-jumped-the-rails.jsonld"}}