OpenAI Reveals ChatGPT is Being Attacked by DDoS

AI organization behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, has acknowledged that distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults are to blame for the sporadic disruptions that have plagued its main generative AI product.

As per the developer’s status page, ChatGPT and its API have been experiencing "periodic outages" since November 8 at approximately noon PST.

According to the most recent update published on November 8 at 19.49 PST, OpenAI said, “We are dealing with periodic outages due to an abnormal traffic pattern reflective of a DDoS attack. We are continuing work to mitigate this.”

While the application seemed to have been operating normally, a user of the API reported seeing a "429 - Too Many Requests" error, which is consistent with OpenAI's diagnosis of DDoS as the cause of the issue.

Hacktivists Claim Responsibility 

Hacktivist group Anonymous Sudan took to Telegram, claiming responsibility of the attacks. 

The group claimed to have targeted OpenAI specifically because of its support for Israel, in addition to its stated goal of going against "any American company." The nation has recently been under heavy fire for bombing civilians in Palestine.

The partnership between OpenAI and the Israeli occupation state, as well as the CEO's declaration that he is willing to increase investment in Israel and his multiple meetings with Israeli authorities, including Netanyahu, were mentioned in the statement.

Additionally, it asserted that “AI is now being used in the development of weapons and by intelligence agencies like Mossad” and that “Israel is using ChatGPT to oppress the Palestinians.”

"ChatGPT has a general biasness towards Israel and against Palestine," continued Anonymous Sudan.

In what it described as retaliation for a Quran-burning incident near Turkey's embassy in Stockholm, the group claimed responsibility for DDoS assaults against Swedish companies at the beginning of the year.

Jake Moore, cybersecurity advisor to ESET Global, DDoS mitigation providers must continually enhance their services. 

“Each year threat actors become better equipped and use more IP addresses such as home IoT devices to flood systems, making them more difficult to protect,” says Jake.

“Unfortunately, OpenAI remains one of the most talked about technology companies, making it a typical target for hackers. All that can be done to future-proof its network is to continue to expect the unexpected.”