February has been an eventful month in the tech sector as ransomware operator LockBit, which has accrued billions of dollars in ill-gotten gains in its approximately four-year history, was taken down by an international task force spearheaded by the UK’s National Crime Agency.
Elsewhere, ChatGPT suffered a major setback as users noticed the industry-leading chatbot had taken to answering prompts with complete gibberish. Though the issue was fixed within a day of being reported, it has raised important questions about the reliability of the service and the technology that underlies it.
In this episode, Jane and Rory welcome back Ross Kelly, ITPro’s news and analysis editor, to explore February’s big cyber security story and discuss what ChatGPT’s moment of madness means for generative AI.
Highlights
“It's not unprecedented. We have seen these sort of instances before, we've seen it with the Qakbot, Emotet takedowns. We've seen it with ALPHV as welI. I think what's really interesting here is that law enforcement agencies are becoming really aggressive and there's a lot of global coordination here. We've got the FBI, NCA, a lot of international partners coordinating on this.”
“The NCA is obviously going to emphasize the impact of this and a positive thing in terms of taking LockBit down. LockBit are going to really try and underplay as far making it seem like they're still a really serious threat for organizations.”
RELATED REPORT
“There were a few instances where people were asking for coding advice and were, again, getting nonsensical answers back. If you're working to a deadline [it] might not be the best thing in the world when you're getting ChatGPT essentially just screaming garbage at you.”
Footnotes
- LockBit could be done and dusted after NCA operation gained access to admin environments, source code, and affiliate info
- LockBit rises from the ashes, but will it pack the same punch as before?
- Life after LockBit: A fragmented landscape and wayward affiliates will still cause chaos for enterprises
- Europol takes down 'dangerous' Emotet botnet
- Qakbot forced offline, but history suggests it probably won’t be forever
- Everything we know so far about the rumored ALPHV 'takedown'
- History tells us ALPHV will likely recover from recent takedown
- LockBit remains most dangerous ransomware despite fall in attacks
- The 'Big Three’ ransomware groups are losing their grip on the industry as gangs begin to fracture, study shows
- ChatGPT has gone haywire, and nobody knows why
- ChatGPT gives wrong answers to programming questions more than 50% of the time
- OpenAI's Sam Altman: Hallucinations are part of the “magic” of generative AI
- Google’s latest warning over generative AI shows that ChatGPT has it cornered
Subscribe
- Subscribe to The IT Pro Podcast on Apple Podcasts
- Subscribe to The IT Pro Podcast on Spotify
- Subscribe to the IT Pro newsletter
- Join us on LinkedIn
-
M&S suspends online sales as 'cyber incident' continuesNews Marks & Spencer (M&S) has informed customers that all online and app sales have been suspended as the high street retailer battles a ‘cyber incident’.
-
Manners cost nothing, unless you’re using ChatGPTOpinion Polite users are costing OpenAI millions of dollars each year – but Ps and Qs are a small dent in what ChatGPT could cost the planet
-
April rundown: MITRE frights and Microsoft launches Recall (again)ITPro Podcast As CISA delivered an eleventh-hour reprieve for the CVE database, AWS reportedly began to pause some data center leases
-
The new era of cyber threatsITPro Podcast With AI-powered attacks and state-backed groups, security teams face face a new wave of sophisticated threats
-
Supply chain scares and Google’s AI codeITPro Podcast As the ransomware attack on Blue Yonder disrupts a wide range of firms, Google moves to lead by example on internal AI code
-
Halloween special: Cybersecurity horror storiesPodcast Join us for three terrifying tales sure to chill any IT professional to the core
-
Securing your business with education and trainingITPro Podcast Keeping your workforce updated on the latest threats requires a cohesive cyber skills strategy
-
Cracking open insider threatsITPro Podcast Leaders need to perform strict identity measures on would-be hires – and ensure employees who leave have access promptly removed
-
Protecting the public sector from hackersITPro Podcast With the public sector facing increasingly sophisticated threat actors, leaders need centralized security plans and better communication
-
How cyber attacks damage mental healthITPro Podcast As staff struggle to cope in the immediate aftermath of a cyber incident, leaders must do more to foster a culture of support
