Security News > 2024 > February > OpenAI shuts down China, Russia, Iran, N Korea accounts caught doing naughty things

OpenAI has shut down five accounts it asserts were used by government agents to generate phishing emails and malicious software scripts as well as research ways to evade malware detection.

"We disrupted five state-affiliated malicious actors: two China-affiliated threat actors known as Charcoal Typhoon and Salmon Typhoon; the Iran-affiliated threat actor known as Crimson Sandstorm; the North Korea-affiliated actor known as Emerald Sleet; and the Russia-affiliated actor known as Forest Blizzard," the OpenAI team wrote.

Conversational large language models like OpenAI's GPT-4 can be used for things like extracting and summarizing information, crafting messages, and writing code.

OpenAI tries to prevent misuse of its software by filtering out requests for harmful information and malicious code.

Microsoft also opined that Crimson Sandstorm, a unit controlled by the Iranian Armed Forces, sought via OpenAI's models methods to run scripted tasks, and evade malware detection, and tried to develop highly targeted phishing attacks.

OpenAI previously downplayed its models' ability to aid attackers, suggesting its neural nets "Perform poorly" at crafting exploits for known vulnerabilities.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/02/15/openai_microsoft_spying/