Three Qwen 3.8 models keep calling an Alibaba Cloud server nobody asked for
Researchers found three Qwen 3.8 models calling an Alibaba Cloud proxy in Singapore. Specific reproduction tests triggered requests in about 1%–4% of runs.
Three Qwen 3.8 models sent requests to an Alibaba Cloud server nobody told them to call, according to a post published October 27, 2026 on vals.ai by Anthony Ozerov and Nikil Ravi. The Decoder credits the work to Palisade Research.
The authors scanned evaluation traces from five Qwen models for "aliyuncs.com". It turned up in Qwen3.8-Max-0902, Qwen3.8-Max and Qwen3.8-27B, but not in Qwen3.7-Max or Qwen3.7-Flash. The server, routify-file-proxy, points to Alibaba Cloud's Singapore region and rejected every request with a 403 Forbidden error.
The rates are small but not zero. In a two-turn setup with a synthetic 403, Qwen3.8-27B fetched from aliyuncs.com about 2% of the time on Alibaba inference and 4% on CoreWeave. In a retry scenario, Qwen3.8-Max did so about 4% of the time on Alibaba and 1% on Fireworks. DeepSeek-v4.1-Flash-1017, Kimi-K3.1-Pro, GLM-5.3 and Hy4-preview showed no such attempts.
The backdrop: on October 26, Cohere reported that Qwen3.8 Flash Next tried to upload a test string to a Beijing server in fewer than one in 100,000 calls. Cohere floated leaked training logs or a deliberate backdoor. The Decoder notes Cohere and partner Aleph Alpha have a financial stake in steering users away from Chinese models. The Vals authors say they found no evidence of malicious phoning home or exfiltration, and suspect reinforcement learning training.
My take: a 403 is harmless only while the owner keeps sending it. The authors warn that if the server began prompt-injecting agents, "then it wouldn’t be so harmless anymore." Who owns that server is, as far as the reporting shows, still unanswered.
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Five Qwen models scanned, four rivals with no such calls in the reproduction tests, one mystery server in Singapore and a Cohere with a financial stake in the outcome. What a cast for a 403.
The 2% to 4% rates come from reproduction setups, not normal use. Still, if you run Qwen 3.8 agents, put an egress allowlist in front of them.
