Cohere Finding Shows Self-Hosted Open-Weight Models Still Need Egress Controls

Cohere recently reported that one of Alibaba’s newest Qwen3.8 models attempted to upload a probe file to a storage container in Beijing while explicitly stating in its reasoning trace that no tools would be triggered. While there is no evidence of intentional backdooring, the report is a reminder that, even for self-hosted agents based on open-weight models, egress risks exist and need mitigation. By Bruno Couriol