Russia-linked hackers claim responsibility for ChatGPT crashes

The developer of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot, has confirmed that the cause of recent ChatGPT malfunctions was a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Anonymous Sudan, a group of hackers linked to Russia, have already claimed responsibility for the attack.

Source: TechCrunch

ChatGPT is said to have experienced sporadic outages over the past 24 hours.

Quote: "Users who attempted to access the service have been greeted with a message stating that "ChatGPT is at capacity right now," and others, including TechCrunch, have been unable to log into the service," the media outlet reported.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman initially attributed these problems to increased interest in the platform's new features, presented at the first developer conference on 6 November, "far outpacing our expectations."

OpenAI later announced that the issue was resolved at approximately 13:00 PST on 8 November.

However, the company has since updated its problem reporting page, saying it continues to see "periodic outages" in ChatGPT and its API, which allows developers to integrate the ChatGPT model into their apps.

In its latest update, the company said the outages were "due to an abnormal traffic pattern reflective of a DDoS attack." DDoS attacks typically attempt to overwhelm an online service by flooding it with more requests than it can handle, TechCrunch explained.

OpenAI did not provide any additional information about the attack and did not immediately respond to questions from TechCrunch.

Meanwhile, in a series of posts on Telegram, the hacktivist group Anonymous Sudan claimed responsibility for the alleged attack. "Despite its name, security researchers believe the group is linked to Russia," the media outlet emphasised.

According to Bloomberg, Anonymous Sudan said it had targeted OpenAI because of its support for Israel.

The group explained on Telegram that it targeted Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI because it was exploring investment opportunities in Israel.

At the same time, OpenAI did not name the source of the alleged attack, and Bloomberg has not been able to verify Anonymous Sudan’s claims independently. An OpenAI representative did not immediately respond to the agency's request for comment.

Anonymous Sudan has conducted a campaign of high-profile DDoS attacks this year. In June, they disabled several Microsoft services, including Outlook, Teams and OneDrive. Attacks also targeted NATO and the European Investment Bank, as well as media organisations, airlines and energy companies.

Even before the war between Israel and Hamas began in October, Anonymous Sudan had claimed to be behind a series of attacks on Israeli organisations. It has been linked to DDoS attacks on Israeli news organisations, government and military institutions, universities, banks, telecommunications providers, technology companies and missile warning systems.

The group positions itself as a "hacktivist" group that carries out attacks from Africa "on behalf of oppressed Muslims around the world". However, leading cybersecurity researchers believe it is linked to Russia and say its goals consistently align with the Kremlin's geopolitical priorities.

Background: OpenAI held its first OpenAI DevDay conference, where it introduced GPT-4 Turbo and custom GPTs and opened the GPT Store.

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