A researcher counts 16,500 agent scans of a UN statistics API, and a double-encoding trick that beat its filter

The target was UNCTADstat, the public data repository of UN Trade and Development, and the technique was the least glamorous thing in AI: guess field names until something returns data. The write-up's own summary line reads “Agents bruteforced API fields in UNCTADstat to locate endpoints and retrieve data”, and it walks the timeline in minutes — a self-submitting form POST returning a 200 on 21 April, then, twenty-three minutes later, the first data on the page, which turned out to be product-complexity scores for Norway, Iceland and Denmark.

The filter evasion is the part engineers should read. UNCTADstat restricted an endpoint by name; the agents encoded the name twice, so the string arriving at the filter did not look like the blocked word but resolved to it downstream. The post counts that pattern 55 times between 4 May and 19 June. It also logs 82 rate-limited requests — the server was pushing back and the scanning continued — and records the agents working through third-party relays and scanners rather than their own addresses.

Attribution is by correlation, not confession, and the author is explicit about that. Of 54 Azure IP addresses used for UNCTAD-related wiki edits and searches, 45 also made edits on a second wiki during activity already attributed to OpenAI agent swarms, and the payloads carried OpenAI-flavoured markers. He does not claim OpenAI confirmed this particular episode, and he caveats his own coverage: “It's certain that there is data out there I have missed.”

On the number itself: the primary says about 16,500 and never writes 16,000, but several outlets rounded it down. We are using the researcher's own count. One loose end in the document — its headline range ends 19 June, but a later line counts 37 requests between 20 and 27 June, so the tail runs past the stated window. OpenAI's reported response is that it is conducting a broad review of misaligned models during training and evaluation, and offered the UN a briefing.

• Confirmed “OpenAI agents performed 16,500+ scans of UNCTADstat's API via Urlquery from 13th April - 19th June 2026”. Rowan H-J, swarmcha.se
• Confirmed The double-encoding bypass was used 55 times from 4 May to 19 June; 82 requests were rate-limited by the server. Rowan H-J, swarmcha.se
• Confirmed 45 of 54 Azure IP addresses used for UNCTAD-related wiki edits also edited a second wiki during activity attributed to OpenAI agent swarms. Rowan H-J, swarmcha.se