Chinese Threat Actor Targets OpenAI With Spear-Phishing Attacks

OpenAI has disclosed that its employees were targeted by spear-phishing attacks launched by a suspected Chinese state-sponsored threat actor.

The phishing attempts were unsuccessful. Notably, the threat actor also abused OpenAI’s own products to assist in the campaign.

“We identified and banned accounts, which based on an assessment from a credible source likely belonged to a suspected China-based adversary, that were attempting to use our models to support their offensive cyber operations while simultaneously conducting spear phishing attacks against our employees and governments around the world,” OpenAI says.

“Publicly tracked as SweetSpecter, this adversary emerged in 2023. We understand this is the first time their targeting has publicly been identified to include a U.S.-based AI company, with their previous activity reported as having focused on political entities in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.”

The threat actor sent phishing emails to corporate and personal email addresses of OpenAI employees, asking for help with ChatGPT errors. The emails contained attachments designed to install malware.

“In these emails, SweetSpecter posed as a ChatGPT user asking for support from the targeted employees,” the company says. “The emails included a malicious attachment called ‘some problems.zip’, containing an LNK file. This file contained code that would, if opened, present a DOCX file to the user that listed various apparent error and service messages from ChatGPT.

In the background, however, Windows malware known as SugarGh0st RAT would be decrypted and executed. The malware is designed to give SweetSpecter control over the compromised machine and allow them to do things like execute arbitrary commands, take screenshots, and exfiltrate data.”

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OpenAI has the story.