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Outage
AI technology AI tools ChatGPT ChatGPT Vulnerabilities Cyber Security Downdetector Generative AI OpenAI Outage

ChatGPT Outage in the UK: OpenAI Faces Reliability Concerns Amid Growing AI Dependence

 


ChatGPT Outage: OpenAI Faces Service Disruption in the UK

On Thursday, OpenAI’s ChatGPT experienced a significant outage in the UK, leaving thousands of users unable to access the popular AI chatbot. The disruption, which began around 11:00 GMT, saw users encountering a “bad gateway error” message when attempting to use the platform. According to Downdetector, a website that tracks service interruptions, over 10,000 users reported issues during the outage, which persisted for several hours and caused widespread frustration.

OpenAI acknowledged the issue on its official status page, confirming that a fix was implemented by 15:09 GMT. The company assured users that it was monitoring the situation closely, but no official explanation for the cause of the outage has been provided so far. This lack of transparency has fueled speculation among users, with theories ranging from server overload to unexpected technical failures.

User Reactions: From Frustration to Humor

As the outage unfolded, affected users turned to social media to voice their concerns and frustrations. On X (formerly Twitter), one user humorously remarked, “ChatGPT is down again? During the workday? So you’re telling me I have to… THINK?!” While some users managed to find humor in the situation, others raised serious concerns about the reliability of AI services, particularly those who depend on ChatGPT for professional tasks such as content creation, coding assistance, and research.

ChatGPT has become an indispensable tool for millions since its launch in November 2022. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently revealed that by December 2024, the platform had reached over 300 million weekly users, highlighting its rapid adoption as one of the most widely used AI tools globally. However, the incident has raised questions about service reliability, especially among paying customers. OpenAI’s premium plans, which offer enhanced features, cost up to $200 per month, prompting some users to question whether they are getting adequate value for their investment.

The outage comes at a time of rapid advancements in AI technology. OpenAI and other leading tech firms have pledged significant investments into AI infrastructure, with a commitment of $500 billion toward AI development in the United States. While these investments aim to bolster the technology’s capabilities, incidents like this serve as a reminder of the growing dependence on AI tools and the potential risks associated with their widespread adoption.

The disruption highlights the importance of robust technical systems to ensure uninterrupted service, particularly for users who rely heavily on AI for their daily tasks. Despite restoring services relatively quickly, OpenAI’s ability to maintain user trust and satisfaction may hinge on its efforts to improve its communication strategy and technical resilience. Paying customers, in particular, expect transparency and proactive measures to prevent such incidents in the future.

As artificial intelligence becomes more deeply integrated into everyday life, service disruptions like the ChatGPT outage underline both the potential and limitations of the technology. Users are encouraged to stay informed through OpenAI’s official channels for updates on any future service interruptions or maintenance activities.

Moving forward, OpenAI may need to implement backup systems and alternative solutions to minimize the impact of outages on its user base. Clearer communication during disruptions and ongoing efforts to enhance technical infrastructure will be key to ensuring the platform’s reliability and maintaining its position as a leader in the AI industry.

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Verizon
911 service AT&T Consumer Cellular customer complaints Cyber Security Downdetector FBI mobile phone Outage service interruptions T-Mobile USCellular Verizon

Cell Service Restored Following Extensive AT&T Outage

 

AT&T has resolved issues affecting its mobile phone customers following widespread outages on Thursday, according to a company announcement.Throughout the day, tens of thousands of cell phone users across the United States reported disruptions.

Reports on Downdetector.com, a platform monitoring outages, indicated instances of no service or signal after 04:00 EST (09:00 GMT).

AT&T issued an apology to its customers and confirmed that services were fully operational again by early afternoon. The company stated its commitment to taking preventive measures to avoid similar incidents in the future. The cause of the outage is currently being investigated.

Verizon and T-Mobile informed the BBC that their networks were functioning normally. However, they acknowledged that some customers may have experienced service issues while attempting to communicate with users on different networks.

According to Downdetector, AT&T received over 74,000 customer complaints, with significant clusters in southern and eastern regions of the country.

Smaller carriers like Cricket Wireless, UScellular, and Consumer Cellular also reported interruptions in service. Complaints ranged from difficulties with calls, texts, to internet access, with many users reporting no service or signal.

Downdetector's data showed that major cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Atlanta experienced high numbers of outages.

Some individuals also faced challenges with 911 services, prompting officials to advise the use of landlines, social media, or cell phones from alternative carriers in emergencies.

The widespread outage has garnered the attention of the US government, with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security launching investigations, as confirmed by John Kirby, spokesperson for the US National Security Council.

Eric Goldstein, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, stated that they are collaborating with AT&T to understand the root cause of the outage and are ready to provide assistance as necessary.

Although a confidential memo reported by ABC News suggested no signs of malicious activity, CISA officials are actively investigating the incident.
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Security
BlackCat Cyber Attacks Cyberattacks Data Outage Rasnowmare Safety Security

After BlackCat Ransomware Attack, NCR Suffers Aloha POS Outage

 

NCR is experiencing an outage on its Aloha POS platform as a result of a ransomware attack claimed by the BlackCat/ALPHV gang. NCR is a software and technology consulting firm based in the United States that offers digital banking, POS systems, and payment processing solutions to restaurants, enterprises, and retailers. One of their products, the Aloha POS platform used in the hospitality industry, has been down since Wednesday, preventing consumers from using the system. After days of silence, NCR has revealed that the outage was caused by a ransomware attack on the data centers that power its Aloha POS systems.

 "As a valued customer of NCR Corporation, we are reaching out with additional information about a single data center outage that is impacting a limited number of ancillary Aloha applications for a subset of our hospitality customers, On April 13, we confirmed that the outage was the result of a ransomware incident. Immediately upon discovering this development we began contacting customers, engaged third-party cybersecurity experts and launched an investigation. Law enforcement has also been notified, " reads an email sent to Aloha POS customers.

NCR told BleepingComputer that the outage affects only a fraction of its Aloha POS hospitality customers and a "limited number of ancillary Aloha applications." Customers of Aloha POS, on the other hand, have reported on Reddit that the downtime has caused considerable problems in their business operations.

"Restaurant manager here, small franchise stuck in the Stone Age with around 100 employees. We're doing the old pen and paper right now and sending it to head office. The whole situation is a huge migraine," a customer posted to the AlohaPOS Reddit.

Other users are concerned about making payroll for their employees on time, with many customers requesting that data be manually extracted from the data files until the outage is resolved.

"We have a clear path to recovery and we are executing against it. We are working around the clock to restore full service for our customers," NCR told BleepingComputer. "In addition, we are providing our customers with dedicated assistance and workarounds to support their operations as we work toward full restoration."

Unfortunately, interruptions induced by attacks like these can take a long time to fix in a secure manner, as evidenced by the recent DISH and Western Digital breaches. While NCR did not reveal which ransomware operation was responsible for their attack, cybersecurity researcher Dominic Alivieri discovered a brief post on the BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware gang's data breach site in which the threat actors claimed responsibility.

This post also featured a snippet of the alleged NCR representative's negotiation chat exchange with the ransomware gang. The ransomware group told NCR in his discussion that they had not stolen any data from servers during the attack. However, the threat actors claimed to have stolen NCR customers' passwords and threatened to publish them if a ransom was not paid.

"We take a lot of credentials to your clients networks used to connect for Insight, Pulse, etc. We will give you this list after payment," the threat actors told NCR.

BlackCat has subsequently removed the NCR post from their data breach site, most likely in the hopes that the corporation will be prepared to negotiate a payment. The BlackCat ransomware group began operations in November 2021, using a very sophisticated encryptor that allowed for a wide range of attack customization.

The ransomware group was given the name BlackCat after discovering an image of a black cat on its data leak site. However, while discussing their activity on cyber forums and in negotiations, the threat actors refer to themselves as ALPHV.

Since its inception, the ransomware operation has grown to become one of the major ransomware operations currently operating, responsible for hundreds of attacks globally, with ransom demands ranging from $35,000 to more than $10 million.
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WhatsApp
internet outage Message Messaging Apps Outage Power Outage WhatsApp

WhatsApp: Instant Messaging App Services Restored After a 2 Hour Outage

The instant messaging app WhatsApp is restored after a two-hour-long outage on Tuesday. WhatsApp, with around a billion active users, was alerted about the global outage when hundreds of thousands of its online users reported the disruption in their messaging app. 

Reportedly, the instant messaging platform went down at 12:30 PM IST, on Tuesday. The users reported they were unable to send messages or make calls through the app, which was earlier thought of as a mere network connectivity issue. The outage was not limited to the smartphone users of the app, since users of WhatsApp web were also facing the same consequences of the disruption. 

As per a report by Downdetector, an online platform providing real-time stats and information regarding online web services, more than 11,000 online users had reported the outage, while in the United Kingdom the count was 68,000. While in Singapore, about 19,000 users reported disruption in the app since 07:50 GMT. 

Downdetector gathers status updates from various sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform, to keep track of outages. There may have been many users who were impacted by the outage. 

Additionally, WaBetaInfo, an online portal tracking WhatsApp services claimed that the issue is indeed from the server’s side and thus cannot be resolved from the online user’s end. 

Soon after acknowledging the issue, WhatsApp’s parent company Meta said that their engineers are working on the outage issue and will solve it as soon as possible. Following this, Meta Spokesperson even apologized to the users for the inconvenience.  

“We are aware that some people are currently having trouble sending messages and we are working to restore WhatsApp for everyone as quickly as possible,” says Meta Company Spokesperson. While the reason behind the outage is still not revealed by the parent company. 

Considering the popularity of the messaging app which has increasingly emerged as an important communication tool between users, businesses, and governments globally, over 100 billion messages are exchanged daily through WhatsApp as of 2020. This recent outage may have affected a large number of users, including government officials and telecom service providers.
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Users
Cyber Security Network Outage Server Server Down Users

Microsoft Exchange Online And Outlook Email Service Hit By Outage

 

Microsoft is investigating an ongoing outage affecting Microsoft 365 services after users experienced problems signing into, accessing, and receiving emails via the outlook.com gateway and Exchange Online. 

"We're investigating an issue with users accessing or experiencing degraded functionality when using Exchange Online and http://outlook.com services," Microsoft stated in a tweet via the company's official Twitter account for updates on Microsoft 365 services. 

Admins were also warned that further information about these ongoing issues may be found in the admin centre under EX401976 and OL401977. 

"We suspect there may be unexpected network drops which are contributing to the degraded experience and are reviewing diagnostic logs to understand why," the company added. 

While Redmond did not indicate the scope of the problem, hundreds of reports on DownDetector have been reported in the last 24 hours by Outlook and Exchange Online customers who have been unable or experiencing difficulty while attempting to log in or email. In an update to the Outlook.com online site, Microsoft also noted that Microsoft 365 subscribers may be unable to access the web portal or any of its features. 

Microsoft explained, "Users may be unable to access or use outlook.com services or features. We're reviewing diagnostic information and support case data to understand the cause and establish a fix. We're investigating a potential issue and checking for impact to your organization. We'll provide an update within 30 minutes." 

Another Microsoft 365 outage occurred in June, affecting consumers worldwide who attempted to access Microsoft Teams and Exchange Online. Redmond rerouted traffic to another, healthy traffic management infrastructure and performed targeted infrastructure restarts to restore service access and functioning. On July 1, Microsoft stated it fixed the issue that caused this outage. 

"We identified a section of our network infrastructure that was performing below acceptable thresholds. We've rerouted connections to alternate infrastructure and that confirmed the issue is resolved," Redmond tweeted.
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USA
Cyber Attacks Healthcare IT system OSF Healthcare Outage USA

Cyber Attacker had Prior Access to the IT Systems of OSF Healthcare Before Outage

 

The Journal Star reported that OSF HealthCare's computer systems were back up on April 25 following a two-day outage that forced the Peoria, Ill.-based health institution to implement downtime processes and policies. The outage occurred around 3:45 a.m. on April 23, as per the report. 

OSF HealthCare, based in Peoria, Ill.- started informing patients on October 1 that their personal health information had been exposed for more than six weeks as a result of a cyberattack on its IT systems earlier this year. At numerous OSF HealthCare hospitals and sites, the computer systems included patient information and records.

OSF HealthCare is a non-profit Catholic healthcare organization based in Illinois and Michigan that administers a medical group, hospital system, and other healthcare facilities. OSF HealthCare is owned and run by the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis and is headquartered in Peoria, Illinois. 

"During the outage, downtime procedures and protocols were closely followed, which included rescheduling some appointments and procedures," an OSF HealthCare spokesperson informed. "Patient safety is at the forefront of everything we do, and any decision to delay an appointment or procedure was made with safety in mind." 

OSF HealthCare announced on its website on Oct. 1 that the outage was caused by a data security problem. After conducting an investigation, the health system learned that an unauthorized entity obtained access to its networks from March 7 to April 23. The hacker gained access to various files relating to OSF Little Company of Mary and OSF Saint Paul patients. 

The compromised data include personally identifiable information, name, birthdates, Social Security numbers, treatment information, medication information, and health insurance information. As per the warning, financial information from a "smaller subset of patients" was also compromised. 

Patients whose Social Security numbers or driver's license information were disclosed will receive free credit and identity monitoring services from the health system. OSF HealthCare further stated that new precautions and technical security procedures have been adopted to safeguard its network infrastructure. 

OSF HealthCare operates 14 hospitals and a variety of other institutions throughout Illinois and Michigan. All institutions and facilities continued to operate and also admitted new patients during the April outage.
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Outage
Cyber Risk Cyber Security Digital Security Facebook Facebook Security Outage

Facebook Outage Caused Agitation in Nations And Highlighted Risks Of Social Networking

 

The global breakdown of Facebook Inc. highlighted the dangers of depending on its social networking platforms, supporting European regulators' efforts to limit the company's influence just as a whistle-testimony blower's in the United States threatened to draw even more undesirable attention at home. 

While Europe awakened to find Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger back online and running, the extent of Monday's shutdown drew immediate and extensive outrage. Margrethe Vestager, the European Union's antitrust director and digital czar, said the Facebook failure will bring attention to the company's dominance. 

The networking issue that caused operations to go down for almost 2.75 billion people couldn't have happened at a worse moment. Following a Sunday television interview in the United States, whistle-blower Frances Haugen will testify before a Senate panel on Tuesday, telling legislators the "frightening truth" about Facebook. As Facebook services were offline, Haugen's charges that the business prioritized profit ahead of user safety were still making the headlines. 

“It’s always important that people have alternatives and choices. This is why we work on keeping digital markets fair and contestable,” Vestager said. “An outage as we have seen shows that it’s never good to rely only on a few big players, whoever they are.” 

The disclosures caused United States Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to call attention to the dangers that nations that depend on these services face. In New York, Facebook rose as high as 1.3 percent to $330.33, reversing a 4.9 percent drop on Monday. 

Facebook has increasingly been the subject of multiple antitrust and privacy probes in Europe, as well as intensive scrutiny of even minor transactions, such as its planned acquisition of a customer-service software company. Last month, the firm was fined 225 million euros ($261 million) for data privacy violations, and it is currently under investigation by the European Commission and the German competition agency Bundeskartellamt. 

In the next few months, EU lawmakers will decide on new legislation limiting the capacity of strong Internet platforms like Facebook to expand into new services. According to Rasmus Andresen, a German Green member of the European Parliament, the service outage demonstrated the "serious consequences" of relying on one firm for crucial channels of communication, and that Facebook should have never been permitted to buy Instagram and WhatsApp. 

Further, facing a political fallout - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has a low tolerance for political criticism on social networking sites, has called for a new digital "order" as a result of the incident. According to Fahrettin Altun, his presidential communications director, the closure demonstrated how "fragile" social networks are, and urged the speedy development of "domestic and national" alternatives. 

“The problem we have seen showed us how our data are in danger, how quickly and easily our social liberties can be limited,” Altun said in a series of Twitter posts. 

President Muhammadu Buhari's communications staff, government officials, and governors in 36 Nigerian states were all silenced for six hours as a result of the outage. After Twitter's services were banned in Africa's most populous country on June 5th, the administration has become increasingly dependent on Facebook to keep the people informed. 

Facebook is “for us opposition politicians one of the last media outlets where we can talk to you and which isn’t dominated by” Fidesz, Orban’s political party, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony said in a video posted on Tuesday. 

“This outage does show the over-dependence we have on a single company, and the need for diversity and greater competition,” Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group in London, said in an interview. “Their reliance on data-driven, attention-optimizing products is dangerous and needs to be challenged through interventions enabling greater competition.” 

Some telecommunications companies were forced to intervene as a result of the shutdown. In a blog post on its website, the Polish Play unit of Paris-based telecommunications operator Iliad SA reported an eightfold surge in the number of calls as of its customer service. To avoid overloading, it had to modify its network.
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VoIP
Bandwidth Cyber Attcaks DDoS DDOS Attack Outage VoIP

Bandwidth Suffers Outages Caused by DDoS Attack

 

Within the last couple of days, Bandwidth.com has been the latest target of distributed denial of service attacks targeting VoIP companies. 

Bandwidth, a firm providing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), services to companies and resellers, revealed that it suffered a failure after reporting on the DDoS attack on the 27th of September, Monday night. 

Bandwidth Chief Executive Officer David Morken confirmed the incident and also claimed that "a number of critical communications service providers have been targeted by a rolling DDoS attack." Bandwidth started reporting unintended voice and messaging services breakdown from September 25 at 3:31 p.m. EST. 

Bandwidth has since provided periodic status updates describing voice disruptions, improved services 911 (E911), messaging, and portal access. As Bandwidth is among the world's major voicemail service providers for IP firms, several other VoIP suppliers, including Twilio, Accent, DialPad, Phone.com, and RingCentral, have experienced disruptions throughout the past few days. 

While the fact that all those failures are linked to a service outage has not been established, one failure report specifically cites Bandwidth while the others say an upstream provider is implicated. "While we have mitigated much-intended harm, we know some of you have been significantly impacted by this event. For that, I am truly sorry. You trust us with your mission-critical communications. There is nothing this team takes more seriously," Morken said. 

The firm continues to monitor the circumstance with the network services and technical teams and actively engages with the customers to deal with any questions. The company mentioned that they’re going to post updates to status.bandwidth.com because they have further information to provide.

Since the statement was issued, the firm updated the details of a number of incoming and outgoing calling services with partial outages. 

On its Cloud Service Status page, Accent said on Tuesday that the "upstream provider continues to acknowledge the DDoS attack has returned to their network however we are seeing a very limited impact to inbound calling for our services." 

"Mitigation steps are being put in place to route inbound phone numbers around the upstream carrier the impact to service grows. We will continue to monitor the situation and update the status as appropriate," Accent wrote. 

Further, on Monday, a source said that their clients were experiencing serious issues with their migrated phone lines. The firm is the downstream retailer of Bandwidth hosted products and claimed that because of the bandwidth problem, they knew major telecoms company that "was in emergency mode".

Considering VoIP services are usually routed through the internet and necessitate public access to their servers and endpoints, they are indeed the main targets for DDoS extortion. Hackers would be overwhelmed by the transmission of more queries than possible to carry out these DDoS assaults, and the targeted devices and servers will not be available to everyone else. 

"Bandwidth continues to experience a DDoS attack which is intermittently impacting our services. Our network operations and engineering teams continue active mitigation efforts to protect our network," reads a screenshot shared on Reddit. 

Monday night, Bandwidth said that it had restored its services, although it was not apparent if threats were ceased or demands were fulfilled as asked by the actors. Nevertheless, it is usual for cybercriminals to stop attacks momentarily while pushing for extortion, while on Tuesday morning the DDoS attacks were resumed. 
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