[And here we have one of the first examples of how AI can be used for
harm. - Mike]

Microsoft claims its servers were illegally accessed to make unsafe AI content

Date:
Tue, 14 Jan 2025 06:02:00 +0000

Description:
Unsurprisingly, a scheme which involved developing tools to steal API keys
and access Microsoft servers without permission isnt faring well in a
Virginia court.

FULL STORY

Microsoft has accused an unnamed collective of developing tools to intentionally sidestep the safety programming in its Azure OpenAI Service
that powers the AI tool ChatGPT.

In December 2024, the tech giant filed a complaint in the US District Court
for the Eastern District of Virginia against 10 anonymous defendants, who it accuses of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, plus federal racketeering law.

Microsoft claims its servers were accessed to aid the creation of offensive, harmful and illicit content. Though it gave no further details as to the
nature of that content, It was clearly enough for swift action; it had a
Github repository pulled offline, and claimed in a blog post the court
allowed them to seize a website related to the operation.

ChatGPT API keys

In the complaint, Microsoft stated that it first discovered users abusing the Azure OpenAI Service API keys used to authenticate them in order to produce illicit content back in July 2024. It went on to discuss an internal investigation that discovered that the API keys in question had been stolen from legitimate customers.

The precise manner in which Defendants obtained all of the API Keys used to carry out the misconduct described in this Complaint is unknown, but it
appears that Defendants have engaged in a pattern of systematic API Key theft that enabled them to steal Microsoft API Keys from multiple Microsoft customers, reads the complaint.

Microsoft claims, with the ultimate goal of launching a hacking-as-a-service product, the defendants created de3u, a client-side tool, to steal these API keys, plus additional software to allow de3u to communicate with Microsoft servers.

De3u also worked to circumvent the Azure OpenAI Services inbuilt content filters and subsequent revision of user prompts, allowing DALL-E, for
example, to generate images that OpenAI wouldnt normally permit.

These features, combined with Defendants unlawful programmatic API access to the Azure OpenAI service, enabled Defendants to reverse engineer means of circumventing Microsofts content and abuse measures, it wrote in the
complaint.

Via TechCrunch

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/microsoft-claims-its-servers-were-illegally-acce ssed-to-make-unsafe-ai-content

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