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Osaka Teen Arrested for Cyberattack Using AI Tool

OSAKA, Dec 05 (News On Japan) - A 17-year-old high school student living in Osaka has been arrested for a cyberattack on the popular internet café chain Kaikatsu CLUB, with investigators finding that he misused ChatGPT to help create the program used in the intrusion.

According to the Metropolitan Police Department, the teenager, who is in his second year of high school, conspired with associates to carry out an unauthorized access attack on the official app of the Kaikatsu CLUB complex café in January, disabling part of the app’s functions and disrupting operations at Kaikatsu Frontier, the company that runs the service.

Police say the suspect discovered a vulnerability in the app’s system and then turned to the generative AI tool ChatGPT to help write his own program. By deploying the tool to refine and improve the code, he allegedly conducted a cyberattack that allowed him to obtain personal information on more than 7.24 million members.

Although generative AI services are designed to refuse instructions that could be used for crimes, investigators say the teenager repeatedly questioned ChatGPT in ways that circumvented its safeguards whenever errors emerged during the attack, enabling him to enhance the program’s functionality.

The boy has admitted to the allegations, telling police that he found it “fun to discover weaknesses in systems.”

Source: TBS

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