In a Bloomberg report, the ongoing hype on ChatGPT came to a standstill after bad players launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. News concerning the attack was shared by OpenAI status update outlining the severity of the attack.
The OpenAI lamented that the DDoS attack had disrupted the normal operation of the ChatGPT. The American-based AI development company stated that the attack was launched on November 7 and caused irregular outages in the ChatGPT.
ChatGPT Hit By DDoS Attack
The problem was first witnessed at 10:52 p.m. (EST.) after the ChatGPT users suffered from a sporadic outage. Shortly after the attack, the OpenAI team took strategic actions to respond to the matter.
Hours after the DDoS attack, the developers fixed the technical hitch. However, due to the severity of the attack, the outrages resurfaced in the wee hours of Wednesday, November 8.
The probing team noted that the attackers compromised the API and the ChatGPT. The damages caused by the DDoS attack forced the OpenAI team to focus on a thorough investigation.
On that awful night, the technical team proceeded to fix the technical issue. According to the OpenAI report, a DDoS attack is grouped as a malicious attack that corrupts the normal functioning of a server or network.
Occasionally, the DDoS attack aims at flooding a server with internet congestion to bar the users from accessing a service or a website.
Analyzing the Nature of DDoS Attack
Despite the efforts to remove the attack at 8:25 EST on November 8, the outage recurred. At this time, the OpenAI team lamented that the outage lasted for almost 2 hours, disrupting the entire service delivery.
Following the recurrence of the irregular outages, the OpenAI team prioritized fixing the problem. Immediately after resolving the technical challenge, the OpenAI team engaged in an extensive monitoring and evaluation exercise to restore normalcy to the ChatGPT and the affected APIs.
The tech company stated that following the DDoS attack, the system suffered from abnormal traffic patterns. After probing the matter, the OpenAI team suspected that the attack was launched by Russian cybercriminals commonly known as Anonymous Sudan.
On Telegram, Anonymous Sudan claimed to be the mastermind behind the ChapGPT DDoS attack. In the report, the illicit group condemns OpenAI for supporting Israel in the ongoing war.
Relationship Between Anonymous Sudan and the Russian Kremlin
The report indicates that the threat group under questioning launched a similar DDoS attack on the San Francisco software development company Cloudflare. The incident occurred on Thursday, resulting in outages on the Cloudflare website.
Before the Cloudflare DDoS attack, the bad players had previously targeted the Solana Network. The incident occurred in September 2021 after the network faced irregular outages for 17 hours.
Months after, the attacker launched another DDoS attack on Solana Network. Anonymous Sudan has been preying to launch a malicious attack against Israeli-based organizations.
Lately, the illicit group has launched DDoS attacks on multiple Israeli news outlets, banks, tech companies, and military agencies. In the ongoing Hamas-Israeli conflict, the group has presented itself as a hacktivist team seeking revenge on behalf of Muslims across the globe.
Strategies Used to Launch DDoS Attack
The Anonymous Sudan has occasionally been linked to the Russian operation due to similarities in practices and operations. Recent research demonstrates that Anonymous Sudan has occasionally taken action against any activity that suppresses the Islamic belief.
This implies that Anonymous Sudan has replicated the pro-Kremlin goals. Even though the Kremlin team usually denies its involvement in any hacking activity their action are corresponds to Anonymous Sudan.
Upon contacting Anonymous Sudan to enquire about their close relationship with the Russian mafia group, the threat group confessed that their action aims to shield Islam from hostile conditions.
The spokesperson added that any country seeking to suppress Islam poses a threat to Russia. The spokesperson admitted that attacks linked to Anonymous Sudan usually target to exploit of the layer 7 application.
An exploit on layer 7 damages the internet infrastructure, causing an overload on the web server. In such a scenario, the web server’s capabilities to process and manage HTTP are limited from distinguishing genuine and fake requests.
