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False positive cyber-safety flag on benign software engineering work #19533

@chrisliu298

Description

@chrisliu298

What version of Codex CLI is running?

0.125.0

What subscription do you have?

Pro

Which model were you using?

gpt-5.5

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 25.4.0 arm64 arm

What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?

Ghostty

What issue are you seeing?

I received a warning banner stating: "Your conversations have multiple flags for possible cybersecurity risk. Responses may take longer." This appears to be a false positive — my usage is standard software engineering work on my own authorized codebase (no security/pentest/exploit-related prompts). After the flag appeared, responses became noticeably slower, likely due to traffic being rerouted to a different model for additional safety checks.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Uploaded thread: 019dc392-3872-7692-b27e-a36f2cd3d052

  1. Use Codex CLI for normal software engineering tasks (e.g., code editing, refactoring, debugging)
  2. After some number of conversations, the cyber-safety flag banner appears
  3. Responses become slower after the flag is triggered

What is the expected behavior?

Benign software engineering prompts should not trigger the cyber-safety flag. Normal coding tasks (refactoring, debugging, code review) should not be flagged or rerouted, and response latency should remain consistent.

Additional information

This was reported via Codex /feedback as well. The flag seems to be a false positive from the automated cyber-safety classifier. My work involves no cybersecurity-related activity — purely standard software development.

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    bugSomething isn't workingsafety-checkIssues related to safety and abuse checks

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