A report published today, Wednesday, stated that hackers backed by Russia, China, and Iran are using tools from OpenAI, supported by Microsoft, to refine their skills and deceive their targets. Microsoft mentioned in its report that it has tracked hacking groups linked to Russian military intelligence, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and the governments of China and North Korea as they attempt to enhance their hacking campaigns using large language models. These computer programs, often called artificial intelligence, rely on vast amounts of text to generate seemingly human responses.
The company announced this discovery while imposing a comprehensive ban on state-backed hacking groups from using its artificial intelligence products. Tom Burt, Vice President of Customer Security at Microsoft, told Reuters in an interview prior to the report's release, "Regardless of any legal violation or any violation of service terms, we do not want those threat actors that we have identified, that we track and know are threat actors of various kinds, to be able to use this technology." Diplomats from Russia, North Korea, and Iran did not respond to inquiries seeking comment on these allegations. The spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the United States, Liu Pengyu, stated that the embassy opposes “slander and unfounded accusations against China” and calls for the deployment of artificial intelligence technology to be "safe, reliable, and controllable" to "enhance the common good of humanity."
