ChatGPT: OpenAI Attributes Regular Outages to DDoS Attacks

The popular generative AI application ChatGPT experienced recurring outages this week on both the ChatGPT interface and the associated API, according to its own status page.

The company attributed the recurring disruptions to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack resulting in high error rates in the API and ChatGPT itself, and said that it's undertaking a series of countermeasures to get the service back up and running. "We are experiencing periodic outages due to an abnormal traffic pattern indicative of a DDoS attack," the OpenAI status page explained.

A current check on ChatGPT did not reveal any ongoing problems, but some believe that the platform can expect plenty of attention from cyberattackers in general going forward. "While every company is being attacked, AI companies are treasure troves as they have access to a lot of valuable data," says Rahul Pawar, global vice president, security GTM, CTO, GSS at Commvault. "The attack in this early stage of AI is aimed to tarnish the image of AI." DDoS attacks can often mask data exfiltration efforts, and he predicts this will be one of many such attacks the company will have to fend off. He adds that defending against them will take extra attention. DDoS attacks, after all, have become more sophisticated, and ironically often use AI to further sophisticate the botnet attack modules.

Dark Reading 11/10/2023