OpenAI gives Ukraine free Daybreak cyber defence tools and GPT-5.6 Sol

OpenAI will share its Daybreak AI cyber defence system for free with the Ukrainian government to help protect civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and power plants from cyber-attacks, the BBC reports. The deal includes access to GPT-5.6 Sol.

CERT-UA, Ukraine’s national cyber incident response team, recorded nearly 6,000 attacks in 2025.

Daybreak is a programme that gives approved cyber defenders access to advanced models for authorised security work: reviewing older software, investigating suspicious activity, validating vulnerabilities, and testing fixes. GPT-5.6 Sol is a tightly gated frontier cyber model, a high-capability system built to spot software weaknesses that BBC frames as a rival to Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable.

The Next Web says OpenAI is working with Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation. Sasha Baker, head of national security policy at OpenAI, announced the package with Dmytro Kushneruk, Ukraine’s Consul General in San Francisco, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Baker said, “Ukraine is already on the front line, and its defenders need support now. We want to put more capable tools in their hands to help them find and fix vulnerabilities and protect the critical networks people depend on.”

George Osborne, Head of OpenAI for Countries, said protecting civilian infrastructure means defending it against both physical and digital attacks so people can keep living, working, and reaching essential services.

CERT-UA’s 2025 tally via OpenAI and TNW includes attacks on hospital systems, the energy sector, and telecommunications.

OpenAI via TNW says defenders in France, Germany, Poland, and other European countries already use its cyber models. ENISA, the EU cyber agency, used them on software across EU institutions, with the company saying those flaws have since been fixed.

CERT Polska found six flaws in third-party router software with the models, and the vendor has released fixes that CERT Polska says block the attacks it observed. Altman pitched Daybreak to US utilities earlier this month, via TNW.

Rafe Pilling, senior director of threat intelligence at Sophos, told the BBC that Russian offensive cyber operations have been a key component of the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine since 2014. He called any initiative that strengthens Ukraine’s already capable but stretched cyber defence a welcome force multiplier.

Jamie MacColl, a senior research fellow specialising in cyber at the Royal United Services Institute, told the BBC that Western tech firms have supported Ukraine for some time, partly for altruistic reasons and partly because they gain valuable data and intelligence from an active conflict. He expects Daybreak to help given the volume of Russian attacks, and notes Ukraine already has AI tools from OpenAI rivals including Google.

BBC also notes the dual-use nature of frontier cyber models: the same ability to spot weaknesses helps defenders patch holes and helps attackers hunt ways in. Anthropic has tightly restricted access to its systems on those grounds, while OpenAI has allowed some firms in Europe, as well as UK banks, to use its most advanced cyber models. The announcement landed as AI sat on the UNGA agenda in New York, with Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei due to speak.

The same week Cisco Talos published CAIRN, an open tracker that catalogues AI-enabled malware, and Palo Alto productized Mythos and GPT-5.6-Cyber for defenders, OpenAI put a free defender stack on Kyiv’s desk. Free frontier cyber aid is also a live intelligence channel through an active war.

The invoice is zero. The conflict is still the lab.