"From October 7 to 14, we faced repeated attempts to steal NovaSpark, access users’ devices and private driving files, and exploit our sign-in system," IQ.Lvbs wrote in a recent blog post.
IQ.Lvbs' account of the intrusion and immediate response
IQ.Lvbs says it launched a private beta of NovaSpark, the first model for its IQ.Pilot app, in the Comma.ai Discord channel on October 3, 2026. According to the company's blog post, the beta was placed in that channel because NovaSpark requires use of Comma.ai's camera hardware. The startup reports that on October 7 it began seeing repeated attempts to extract the model and access private driving files, and that the first requests "came from an IP assigned to Comma.ai Inc."
IQ.Lvbs published log data it says supports its claims and flagged specific usernames and IP activity. One of the three people involved in IQ.Lvbs, a UI/UX designer who asked to be identified only as "Cat," told The Register the company is "currently reviewing our legal options and looking into involving the authorities." The company says it is considering legal action over the alleged hack.
Discord bans and the fraying of community channels
IQ.Lvbs reports that on October 8, shortly after the alleged attacks began, somebody banned its team from the Comma.ai Discord channel. Posts on the IQ.Pilot Discord channel further indicate that individuals doing private beta testing for IQ.Lvbs were also banned from the Comma.ai channel. The Register attempted to reach Comma.ai and the person identified in public posts as Comma.ai’s CTO for comment; the company and Harald Schäfer did not respond to requests for comment sent to several different addresses, and the Discord user Torq_boi in the Comma.ai channel did not reply to a direct message seeking comment.
Audit-ready is a season. It shouldn't be.
Evidence in spreadsheets, controls drifting between audits, frameworks multiplying on flat headcount. Nubivance runs continuous compliance on Rapid7 Cyber GRC - SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, PCI, CMMC.
End the scrambleModel lineage dispute: Rebellious Hope versus NovaSpark
Tensions escalated around the technical provenance of NovaSpark. An October 7 Discord message in the Comma.ai channel, attributed to user Torq_boi and said to be Harald Schäfer, stated: "I’m glad people are training models and experimenting with this stuff... But don’t lie to people about what you’re doing, and saying it’s not a finetune of existing comma models when it is. That’s not cool.” That message implies NovaSpark was distilled from Comma.ai's Rebellious Hope model.
IQ.Lvbs rejects that characterization. The company wrote that "the claim that NovaSpark is Rebellious Hope with a short fine-tune and an unchanged policy does not survive scrutiny," adding that Comma.ai "do not possess NovaSpark’s model weights or ONNX." Separately, the IQ.Lvbs team member identified as Cat told The Register that NovaSpark is "a good deal ahead of Comma's latest small and large models," and that perceived stagnation at Comma.ai was "a main driver for us making NovaSpark."
Log data and the haraschax link
To bolster its account, IQ.Lvbs published log excerpts and highlighted a username, haraschax, as associated with IP addresses it says belong to Comma.ai. The source material notes Harald Schäfer uses that username on GitHub. IQ.Lvbs points to those logs as evidence tying some of the initial requests to Comma.ai-assigned infrastructure; the company also says it cannot account for how Comma.ai would have obtained NovaSpark's model weights or ONNX if NovaSpark had been built independently, as IQ.Lvbs maintains.
What this means for technologists, regulators, and beta testers
- Technologists and security teams: Engineers running small-model research or distributing private betas will be watching access controls, sign-in systems, and host-based logging closely; IQ.Lvbs published logs to support attribution and said it is reviewing legal options after the alleged extraction attempts.
- Policymakers and regulators: Comma.ai is already the subject of an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to assess whether its driving automation tech contributed to five crashes and three deaths, a separate regulatory thread that intersects with the dispute over models and distribution practices.
- Beta testers and potential customers: Testers removed from community channels and users of devices requiring specific hardware may find themselves dependent on whichever communities host private models; IQ.Lvbs reports both bans and attempts to access testers’ devices and private driving files during the period it described.
Conclusion: claims, counterclaims, and unresolved questions
The record as presented by IQ.Lvbs includes a timeline (October 3 beta launch; alleged intrusion attempts October 7–14; a ban on October 8), log excerpts tying some requests to IP space IQ.Lvbs says is assigned to Comma.ai, and a public assertion by a Comma.ai channel user that NovaSpark is a derivative of Rebellious Hope. IQ.Lvbs disputes that assertion, says Comma.ai does not have NovaSpark’s model artifacts, and is weighing legal and law-enforcement options. Comma.ai and the individual named in channel posts did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The dispute brings two parallel threads into view: a technical contest over model provenance and a security allegation grounded in published log evidence and Discord channel activity. The next steps named by the parties are concrete — IQ.Lvbs reviewing legal options and potentially involving authorities — while several technical and attribution questions remain tied to the logs and to the responses the startup sought but did not receive.
Source: The Register
