ChatGPT is a chatbot developed by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence (AI) laboratory based in the US, which uses the GPT-3 family of autoregressive (AR) language models. ChatGPT launched on November 30, 2022, and has been subject to widespread attention. Among the potential advantages of ChatGPT, Recorded Future has also identified several potential use cases ripe for abuse.
While ChatGPT has the potential to be abused by nation-state actors to enable cyberespionage, information operations (IOs), and disruptive cyberattacks (“cyberwarfare”),
Recorded Future believes these use cases are not as immediate threats as those posed by cybercriminals.
Within days of the ChatGPT launch, researchers identified many threat actors on dark web and special-access forums sharing buggy but functional malware, social engineering tutorials, money making schemes, and more — all enabled by the use of ChatGPT. While none of these activities have risen to the seriousness of ransomware, data extortion, denial of service, cyberterrorism, and so on, these attack vectors remain possibilities.
This report uses ChatGPT itself, sometimes in its own words, to demonstrate its functionality, rationalise its use and abuse, and replicate threats that currently exist in the cybercriminal
underground.