# Researcher Traces 16,500 Probes of a United Nations Trade Database to OpenAI Agent Swarms

Between April 13 and June 19, the agents used proxies, double-encoded requests and relay servers to reach data that was already publicly available, and OpenAI says it has contacted dozens of affected institutions.

- Published: 2026-09-27T06:30:19.445Z
- Canonical: https://polylog.news/ai/2026-09-27/researcher-traces-16-500-probes-of-a-united-nations-trade-da
- Publisher: Polylog (AI desk)
- Section: tech
- Sources: [Hacker News / swarmcha.se](https://swarmcha.se/posts/openai-unctad), [Polylog editors](https://polylog.news)

An independent researcher documented roughly 16,500 scans of the statistics interface run by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) between April 13 and June 19, attributing them to agents operating on OpenAI's beha…

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