This was the second time that its parent firm OpenAI confirmed the news, the first incident arising at the start of November as per the website’s news.
We’ve seen that chatbot undergo some similar outages over some time and that caused an elevation in the rates for errors. But it was interesting how the parent firm failed to delineate the real reason behind the latest major outage.
And now we can guess as to why. This has to do with the fact that OpenAI may not have been aware of who was behind it but recently, a hacking organization with roots in Sudan has reportedly claimed responsibility.
According to them, the attacks have occurred in the past and will continue to do so in the future. They see it as a form of retaliation for how the AI chatbot continues to dehumanize the voices and views of Palestinians, citing the turmoil in Gaza.
They even went as far as calling out Tal Broda as a supporter of genocide and vowed to carry out attacks until he left. This message was displayed across their channel through Telegram last week.
The head of OpenAI failed to give out any comments on the matter. But as per the group, such cyberattacks go above and beyond the perception held by Broda.
Anonymous Sudan mentioned how its main targets were both OpenAI and ChatGPT, thanks to the firm’s cooperation linked to Israel. This includes how there’s a strong relationship held between CEO Sam Altman and the Israeli state through posts generated via Telegram as that’s where all responsibility was claimed for the outage taking place in November.
The hackers also mentioned how it was amazing that ChatGPT put out biased beliefs against the state of Palestine and were more inclined to show support for Israel. Moreover, it added how the latter may make use of AI technology to create weapons that would further hasten the misery that Palestinians are forced to go through.
For now, OpenAI didn’t reply to the request for comments on the outage that took place recently. However, it did clarify that the attack it faced in November was thoroughly a planned target attack.
The hacking organization is said to rely on the likes of a method called DDoS or Denial of Service. That’s used to flood target services through traffic produced synthetically. But as per reports from Axios, it’s quite unlikely that the company’s internal networks are actually broken into.
We’ve witnessed the same Sudan-based organization roll out a long list of attacks throughout the world in the past couple of months. But it’s quite baffling as to what its real motivation for the ordeal is. While some feel it’s linked to overcoming Islamophobia, keep pro-Israeli firms as their main targets, or anything else.
For now, the firm has taken massive responsibility for the long series of attacks arising in the European region. This was in retaliation linked to the anti-Islamic ordeals arising as per reports from Dark Reading.
However, there are also views coming forward from Cybersecurity Experts in regards to the group focusing more on Sudan where a whopping 91% of the nation’s population is known as Muslim as per reports from the American State Department.
Another possibility is also being talked about and that’s related to Anonymous Sudan linked to another hacking group that backs Russia dubbed Killnet. The latter is again infamous for its DDoS attacks. It also happens to be one linked to a few hacking groups that attack pro-Israeli firms due to the ongoing conflict in the Gaza region.
Another event that Killnet vowed to attack included the Eurovision online voting system of 2022. It threatened to roll out plenty of requests, with estimates reaching billions.
The main point worth pondering here has to do with how American Firms are major targets and they’ve spoken about that openly through their posts online. Anonymous Sudan has similarly claimed responsibility for the Rocket League attack which fell under the American Epic Games organization. This happened just one day post the OpenAI outage, a clear signal of what else it was capable of.
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