OpenAI confirmed it has been addressing “periodic outages” due to denial-of-services (DDoS) attacks on its API and ChatGPT services. Users affected by the issues reported seeing “something seems to have gone wrong” errors, with ChatGPT being unable to generate a response.
The confirmation from OpenAI comes days after the company addressed another ChatGPT outage that also took down its Application Programming Interface (API), partial outages and Dall-E elevated error rates.
While OpenAI did not specify the source of the DDoS attack, a threat actor known as Anonymous Sudan claimed the attacks. The threat actor further stated that OpenAI was targeted for its “cooperation with the occupation state of Israel” and ChatGPT’s “biasness towards Israel and against Palestine as it has been exposed in twitter”.
Earlier this year, the threat actor was confirmed to have orchestrated attacks on Microsoft’s http://Outlook.com , OneDrive, and Azure Portal. The group launched in January 2023 has been targeting global organisations and government agencies, disrupting web-facing infrastructure, announcing they will target anyone opposing Sudan.
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However, some cybersecurity researchers believe the group might be linked to Russia instead, a report from Bleeping Computer said.
The attacks on OpenAI are the latest in a series of cyberattacks stemming from the Hamas-Israel conflict. Hacker groups supporting either side have launched attacks on government and private websites.
Threat actors were also found using the conflict to spread spyware using open-source apps used by Israeli citizens to receive notifications of incoming rockets. Additionally, the conflict’s resulting humanitarian crisis is also being used by cybercriminals to spread crypto fundraising scams on popular social media platforms.
