Anonymous Sudan Vows to Continue Cyber Attacks on ChatGPT in Protest Against Israel
The politically motivated hacking collective known as Anonymous Sudan has announced its determination to persistently target ChatGPT, a platform owned by OpenAI, as part of its ongoing campaign against Israel and its supporters. Anonymous Sudan has taken responsibility for several service disruptions on ChatGPT in the past month, including the most recent outage that occurred on Thursday. OpenAI confirmed that the major outage lasted for approximately 40 minutes, during which the service was intermittently unavailable.
The cyber attack was announced by Anonymous Sudan on its Telegram channel during the service outage. The group’s motive for targeting ChatGPT is linked to Tal Broda, the head of research at ChatGPT, who had expressed support for Israel during the conflict in Gaza. In a statement posted on its Telegram channel, Anonymous Sudan declared, We will continue to target ChatGPT until Tal Broda, the supporter of genocide, is expelled, and until ChatGPT stops dehumanizing Palestinians.
In response to the controversy, Broda issued an apology on Sunday regarding some tweets he had previously shared in support of Israel during the October 7th events on the Ex, formerly known as Twitter. In his apology, Broda expressed shock and deep sadness over the horrific massacre that occurred on October 7th in Israel, carried out by Hamas. He clarified that his intention was to voice his objection to Hamas, and not to the civilians in Gaza who are currently suffering.
Anonymous Sudan is an electronic hacking group that has been involved in various attacks against targets in Sweden, Denmark, the United States, Australia, and other countries since early 2023. While the group claims to be based in Sudan and targets what it refers to as anti-Muslim activities, researchers in the threat intelligence field have identified potential logistical and ideological links to Russia.
The group initially gained attention in February 2023 when it targeted several websites in Sweden and Denmark in response to an extremist right-wing activist publicly burning a copy of the Quran. Later in April 2023, Anonymous Sudan launched attacks on various Israeli websites in support of the Israeli Defense Forces during clashes with Hamas.
In July 2023, the group targeted the AO3 website, citing religious objections to its content. It also attacked a series of Australian universities, hospitals, and airports in March 2023, along with its ally. Additionally, in June 2023, Anonymous Sudan, in collaboration with the Reville hacking group, threatened to attack the vital banking infrastructure due to Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine.
While the origins and motives of Anonymous Sudan remain unclear, some threat researchers speculate that the group may have connections to Russia based on the language used and its hacking methods. Efforts to uncover more information about the group are ongoing.
As the Anonymous Sudan group pledges to continue its cyber attacks on ChatGPT in protest against Israel, tensions escalate between supporters and opponents of the group’s actions. The situation highlights the ongoing influence of politically motivated hacking collectives and raises concerns about the potential implications of such cyber attacks.
