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Generative AI chatbot ChatGPT is suffering from a major outage, with threat actors claiming to have launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on OpenAI.
The service, which has over 100 million active users on a weekly basis, was first flagged by OpenAI at 11:42pm on Wednesday night (05:42 PST), with the company saying that the outage affected both ChatGPT and its application programming interface.
Users were met with error messages saying that ChatGPT was unable to generate responses and that “something seems to have gone wrong”.
OpenAI immediately announced it was investigating the issue and has since said that a fix has been implemented and that services have begun to “gradually” return to normal.
Attempts by Cyber Daily to access ChatGPT, at the time of writing, still result in the AI chatbot timing out.
While OpenAI has not said anything regarding a cyber attack, threat actors are claiming to have brought the service down through a DDoS attack.
The alleged attack appears to have been a collaborative effort between Skynet and Anonymous Sudan, two groups that have worked together in the past to launch attacks on large firms such as Apple, Telegram and Azure.
Claims of an attack on ChatGPT first appeared on Skynet’s Telegram, where it posted screenshots of ChatGPT timing out, with a command window with statements such as “!OVERLOAD2_SKYNET.”
It also posted screenshots of a spike of outage reports for ChatGPT on DownDetector and OpenAI’s status website.
The images were then reposted on Anonymous Sudan’s Telegram, with the group providing much more commentary on the motivations behind the alleged attack.
“Some reasons why we targeted OpenAI and ChatGPT :
There is a major contrast between Skynet and Anonymous Sudan’s demeanour regarding the outage, with the latter much more politically motivated.
“OpenAI / ChatGPT, learn from Microsoft, we f***** them up and down continuously until they admit it’s our attack by force, and in the same way we will force you to admit it’s a DDoS attack like dogs,” Anonymous Sudan said on its Telegram.
That being said, Skynet is not without its taunts. The group posted a screenshot back in September of ChatGPT generating a response to what is likely “What is the Godzilla botnet”, a popular botnet that is often used to launch major DDoS attacks.
“The Godzilla botnet is aptly named due to its sheer size and capability to cause widespread chaos and devastation in the online world,” the ChatGPT screenshot read.
“It is a force to be reckoned with, and its actions can result in severe disruption to internet services and security breaches.”
This seems to suggest that the Godzilla botnet is used by Skynet and Anonymous Sudan, with both groups favouring DDoS attacks as their weapon of choice.
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