The hacktivist group alleges OpenAI’s support for Israel as motivation for the DDoS ( Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. In this attack, the threat actor floods a server with traffic to prevent users from connecting to the site. 

The developer behind ChatGPT acknowledged that the intermittent outages were a result of a DDoS attack. The outages began around 8 pm on the 8th of November

In its most recent update on the matter, the company said: “We are dealing with periodic outages due to an abnormal traffic pattern reflective of a DDoS attack. We are continuing work to mitigate this.”

Despite these efforts, users continue to report disruptions, chiefly the “429 – Too Many Requests” error, aligning with OpenAI’s identification of a DDoS attack as the root cause.

https://twitter.com/jonathanfilbert/status/1722541963713659021

The hacktivist group Anonymous Sudan claimed responsibility for the attacks on Telegram. When listing the reasons they targeted OpenAI and ChatGPT, the group said: 

“OpenAI’s cooperation with the occupation state of Israel and the CEO of OpenAI saying he’s willing to invest into Israel more, and his several meetings with Israeli officials like Netanyahu, as Reuters reported.”

“ChatGPT has a general biasness towards Israel and against Palestine as it has been exposed in twitter, in general there’s huge bias of the model towards some topics which has to be fixed.”

This wouldn’t be Anonymous Sudan’s first attack of this kind. Earlier this year the group claimed to be behind another DDoS attack against the European Investment Bank. 

Recommended reading

• Anonymous Sudan and Killnet Strike Again, EIB Confirms Cyber Attack
• Hacktivist Groups Pounce As Israel-Palestine Conflict Escalates
• Royal Family Website Targeted in DDoS Cyber-Attack

Nor is Anonymous Sudan the only pro-Palestine hacking group. According to a report from The Cyber Express, there are about 35 pro-Palestine hacking groups participating in the conflict. 

“While the claimed targeting of non-Israeli organizations is not a novel dimension of the cyber activity that has accompanied this war, its persistence appears noteworthy, especially when considered alongside the apparent decrease in some groups’ targeting of Israeli organizations,” said the threat research, intelligence, knowledge, and engagement (STRIKE) team at SecurityScorecard. 

“While the ground war continues to present risks of regional escalation, the recent attacks ( . . . ) illustrate just how far beyond the region the cyber conflict has already expanded.”