OpenAI splits Codex's cyber access in two and reports what the more permissive tier actually does

OpenAI now gates cyber-capable agent access into two tiers: Daybreak Blue (general models like GPT-5.6 Sol with defensive-work guardrails removed) and Daybreak Red (a new purpose-trained model, GPT-5.6-Cyber, for exploit development, red teaming and penetration testing). On OpenAI's own internal completion-rate benchmark for dual-use requests such as exploit-chain development and privilege escalation, GPT-5.6-Cyber completes 95.0% of requests, against 1.5% for standard GPT-5.6 Sol and 2.0% for Sol under Daybreak Blue. Used internally, the model found two previously unknown V8 vulnerabilities chainable into a sandbox escape, which Google fixed and assigned CVE-2026-15903, plus over 400 privilege-escalation bugs in an undisclosed OS kernel and vulnerabilities in a popular mobile OS and database. Alongside the launch, OpenAI is requiring hardware security keys on all Daybreak accounts starting September 1, 2026, and "strongly encouraging" Codex users generally to move from full-access mode to auto-review mode, where actions requiring elevated permissions are checked before they execute outside the sandbox.

Why it matters: The model capable enough to find a real Chrome sandbox escape chain is also the one OpenAI is locking behind identity verification, hardware keys and default-on auto-review. That pairing (capability up, default oversight up with it) is a concrete data point for the sandboxing and review needed by any sufficiently capable coding agent, including general-purpose ones.