Hackers hit AI coding tool OpenCode, running up charges on users’ AI accounts

OpenCode, an open-source AI coding agent that has been gaining ground among developers as an alternative to Claude Code and Cursor, said Saturday that attackers broke into an older system overnight, affecting 1.4% of users of its online platform, OpenCode Console, where some users store the API keys, or digital passwords, they use to access AI services.

As the OpenCode team struggled to keep pace with the attack, the scramble to respond highlighted a growing problem: companies without vetted access to AI models with fewer safety restrictions have a hard time defending against large-scale, AI-driven cyberattacks. “We had a security breach last night related to a large-scale distillation attack that impacted 1.4% of OpenCode Console users,” the company wrote on X. “We have notified them all this morning via email.” Users who did not receive an email were not impacted, the company said.

While the company didn’t specify how the distillation attack occurred, leaked API keys can help users in countries with restricted access to American models generate the high volume of outputs needed for that process. Some skeptics called…