OpenAI Grapples with DDoS Attacks

OpenAI has been dealing with a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks targeting its API and ChatGPT services over the past 24 hours. The company has acknowledged that they are dealing with “periodic outages due to an abnormal traffic pattern reflective of a DDoS attack.”

Impact on Users

• Users affected by these incidents reported encountering errors such as “something seems to have gone wrong” and “There was an error generating a response” when accessing ChatGPT.
• Following a major outage on Wednesday, ChatGPT and its API have experienced partial outages, along with elevated error rates in Dall-E.

Threat Actor Group and Attack Method

Threat actor group Anonymous Sudan has claimed responsibility for the DDoS attacks on OpenAI. According to the group, the attacks are in response to OpenAI’s perceived bias. The attackers utilized the SkyNet botnet, which recently incorporated support for application layer attacks or Layer 7 (L7) DDoS attacks.

Expert Commentary

“Distributed denial of service attacks are internet vandalism. Low effort, complexity, and in most cases more of a nuisance than a long-term threat to a business. However, as the attacks are on Layer 7 they will be targeting the application itself, therefore OpenAI will need to make some changes to mitigate the attack.” – Brad Freeman, Director of Technology at SenseOn

Suspicions and Future Challenges

However, the attribution of these attacks to Anonymous Sudan has raised suspicions among cybersecurity researchers. The situation once again highlights the ongoing challenges faced by organizations dealing with DDoS attacks and the complexities of accurately identifying the perpetrators.

(Photo by Johann Walter Bantz on Unsplash)

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Tags: api, chatgpt, cybersecurity, ddos, infosec, openai, security