Expanding Daybreak Program to Ukraine

OpenAI has officially announced that it is offering the Government of Ukraine access to its Daybreak program to support the cyber defense of civilian infrastructure. Working alongside the Ministry of Digital Transformation, OpenAI will provide Ukrainian teams with specialized tools to identify software vulnerabilities more effectively and to develop and test fixes at an accelerated pace. Further details are available from OpenAI News in the original source material.

The formal announcement was made on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. Key figures participating in the announcement included Dmytro Kushneruk, the Consul General of Ukraine in San Francisco, and Sasha Baker, Head of National Security Policy at OpenAI. Further details are available from Global Affairs in the original source material.

Addressing Persistent Cyber Threats

Ukrainian defenders continue to face persistent cyber attacks from Russia, which occur alongside ongoing physical attacks on the country's infrastructure. According to official data, Ukraine’s national cyber incident response team, CERT-UA, handled nearly 6,000 cyber incidents in 2025 alone.

These recorded incidents encompass targeted operations against vital sectors such as hospital systems, the energy sector, and telecommunications. This high volume of malicious activity underscores the intense pressure currently placed on organizations that provide essential services to the civilian population.

Capabilities of OpenAI's Daybreak Toolset

OpenAI’s Daybreak system provides authorized cyber defenders with advanced artificial intelligence capabilities for security work. The toolset assists professionals with a variety of tasks, ranging from reviewing older software and investigating suspicious network activity to validating vulnerabilities and testing software fixes.

Sasha Baker, Head of National Security Policy at OpenAI, emphasized the company's commitment to supporting the region. She stated that the organization is proud to support Ukraine’s cyber defenders who are actively protecting essential services against daily attacks. Baker noted that Daybreak allows public and private entities to strengthen defenses before emerging threats take hold, placing capable tools directly into the hands of those on the front line.

Echoing these sentiments, George Osborne, Head of OpenAI for Countries, stated that Ukraine has demonstrated under extreme pressure that cyber defense forms a central pillar of national security. Osborne noted that protecting civilian infrastructure requires defending against both physical and digital attacks to ensure citizens can continue to live, work, and access essential services safely.

Broader European Deployments and Impact

Prior to this announcement regarding Ukraine, OpenAI had already provided access to its specialized cyber models to various defenders across Europe, including nations such as France, Germany, and Poland. Within the European Union, the EU's cyber agency, ENISA, utilized these models to successfully identify vulnerabilities in software deployed across EU institutions, all of which have since been properly fixed.

Furthermore, in Poland, the national cyber agency CERT Polska leveraged OpenAI models to help discover six separate vulnerabilities located within third-party router software. The respective vendor subsequently released fixes, which CERT Polska confirmed successfully prevent the specific types of attacks previously observed.

Sources

• OpenAI NewsOpenAI extends cyber access to Ukraine for civilian defense