Sunday, February 9, 2025
HomeCVE/vulnerabilityChatGPT Crawler Vulnerability Abused to Trigger Reflexive DDoS Attacks

ChatGPT Crawler Vulnerability Abused to Trigger Reflexive DDoS Attacks

Published on

SIEM as a Service

Follow Us on Google News

Security researchers have uncovered a severe vulnerability in OpenAI’s ChatGPT API, allowing attackers to exploit its architecture for launching Reflective Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

This loophole, characterized by a high severity CVSS score of 8.6, raises significant concerns regarding the scalability and security of AI services deployed on cloud platforms, specifically Microsoft’s Azure.

Overview of the Vulnerability

The vulnerability arises from the ChatGPT API’s inadequacies in processing HTTP POST requests sent to https://chatgpt.com/backend-api/attributions.

Attackers can craft a single request containing a multitude of URLs—potentially thousands—without the system enforcing any limits on input validation.

As a result, the API unwittingly sends simultaneous requests to a targeted website from multiple IP addresses associated with Microsoft Azure, overwhelming the victim’s server.

Investigate Real-World Malicious Links & Phishing Attacks With Threat Intelligence Lookup - Try for Free

When a well-formed HTTP POST request reaches the ChatGPT server, it triggers separate outbound requests for each URL provided in the payload.

As OpenAI’s API fails to check for duplicate URLs or restrict the number of connections, a crafted attack can result in a massive influx of requests flooding the target web server.

This behavior highlights significant lapses in OpenAI’s quality control and software engineering processes, necessitating immediate remedial action to prevent potential abuse.

The flaw poses a considerable threat to targeted websites, as they can easily become overwhelmed by the barrage of HTTP requests.

The implications for availability are severe, potentially leading to prolonged service outages.

Furthermore, while the vulnerability does not compromise data confidentiality or integrity, the sheer volume of traffic could severely disrupt normal operations, leading to financial and reputational damage for affected organizations.

Proof of Concept

Security experts have demonstrated the viability of the exploit with a simple proof of concept. The following Bash script illustrates how an attacker might initiate 50 HTTP requests directed at an unsuspecting target:

#!/bin/bash

echo {1..50} | tr ' ' '\n' | (

  while read -r i;

    do echo "https://my-website.localhost:$RANDOM/$i-$RANDOM.txt";

  done

) | jq -R -s -j -c '{ "urls": split("\n")[:-1] }' \

| curl -v --http1.1 \

  -H 'user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/535.32 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/133.0.0.1 Safari/535.32' \

  -H "content-type: application/json" \

  -H 'origin: https://www.chatgpt.com' \

  --data-binary @- -X POST 'https://chatgpt.com/backend-api/attributions'

Log files from the targeted website reveal alarming patterns, with multiple connection attempts occurring within seconds. This indicates that a successful attack can result in a significant degradation of service.

According to the GitHub report, the discovery of the ChatGPT crawler vulnerability underscores the pressing need for enhanced quality control measures and stringent security protocols in the development of AI systems.

Without immediate remediation from OpenAI, this vulnerability may be exploited, leading to potentially catastrophic consequences for web services worldwide.

Stakeholders in the tech community must remain vigilant and proactive in addressing such high-severity vulnerabilities to safeguard the integrity of their digital infrastructures.

Integrating Application Security into Your CI/CD Workflows Using Jenkins & Jira -> Free Webinar

Divya
Divya
Divya is a Senior Journalist at GBhackers covering Cyber Attacks, Threats, Breaches, Vulnerabilities and other happenings in the cyber world.

Latest articles

UK Pressures Apple to Create Global Backdoor To Spy on Encrypted iCloud Access

United Kingdom has reportedly ordered Apple to create a backdoor allowing access to all...

Autonomous LLMs Reshaping Pen Testing: Real-World AD Breaches and the Future of Cybersecurity

Large Language Models (LLMs) are transforming penetration testing (pen testing), leveraging their advanced reasoning...

Securing GAI-Driven Semantic Communications: A Novel Defense Against Backdoor Attacks

Semantic communication systems, powered by Generative AI (GAI), are transforming the way information is...

Cybercriminals Target IIS Servers to Spread BadIIS Malware

A recent wave of cyberattacks has revealed the exploitation of Microsoft Internet Information Services...

Supply Chain Attack Prevention

Free Webinar - Supply Chain Attack Prevention

Recent attacks like Polyfill[.]io show how compromised third-party components become backdoors for hackers. PCI DSS 4.0’s Requirement 6.4.3 mandates stricter browser script controls, while Requirement 12.8 focuses on securing third-party providers.

Join Vivekanand Gopalan (VP of Products – Indusface) and Phani Deepak Akella (VP of Marketing – Indusface) as they break down these compliance requirements and share strategies to protect your applications from supply chain attacks.

Discussion points

Meeting PCI DSS 4.0 mandates.
Blocking malicious components and unauthorized JavaScript execution.
PIdentifying attack surfaces from third-party dependencies.
Preventing man-in-the-browser attacks with proactive monitoring.

More like this

UK Pressures Apple to Create Global Backdoor To Spy on Encrypted iCloud Access

United Kingdom has reportedly ordered Apple to create a backdoor allowing access to all...

Autonomous LLMs Reshaping Pen Testing: Real-World AD Breaches and the Future of Cybersecurity

Large Language Models (LLMs) are transforming penetration testing (pen testing), leveraging their advanced reasoning...

Securing GAI-Driven Semantic Communications: A Novel Defense Against Backdoor Attacks

Semantic communication systems, powered by Generative AI (GAI), are transforming the way information is...