OpenAI bans accounts linked to ‘covert Iranian influence operation’

The effort was part of a sprawling Iranian campaign to target U.S. elections unmasked by various tech companies in recent days.

OpenAI identified and banned a cluster of accounts this week that the company said Friday were part of a “covert Iranian influence operation” that generated content related to a variety of issues, including the U.S. presidential elections. 

The news comes less than a week after former President Donald Trump’s campaign said that it had been compromised by a cyber operation that Microsoft linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which used a former senior Trump adviser’s compromised email account to successfully exfiltrate internal campaign materials. 

Google’s Threat Analysis Group also said this week that it had observed Iranian-backed efforts to step up the targeting of American and Israeli officials and organizations, including both major U.S. presidential campaigns.

The Iranian effort identified by OpenAI used ChatGPT to generate long-form articles and shorter social media comments, which were shared across five websites posing as both progressive and conservative news outlets, as well as comments in Spanish and English posted on social media.

“We identified a dozen accounts on X and one on Instagram involved in this operation, with some accounts posing as progressives and others as conservatives,” OpenAI said in a statement posted to the company’s website Friday. “They generated some of these comments by asking our models to rewrite comments posted by other social media users.”

The content generated by the operation touched on the Israel-Gaza conflict, Israel’s presence at the Olympic Games, the U.S. presidential elections, politics in Venezuela, the rights of Latinx communities in the U.S. and Scottish independence, the company said. 

The operation did “not appear to have achieved meaningful audience engagement,” the company noted, with the “majority of social media posts that we identified [receiving] few or no likes, shares or comments.”

Microsoft’s report noted that an Iranian cluster of activity that spun up phony “news” and commentary websites sought to engage U.S. voters on opposing sides of the political spectrum, in part, by using AI-enabled services.

A spokesperson for the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment Friday. The spokesperson previously told CyberScoop that the Iranian government neither had intent nor motive to interfere in U.S. elections.

100-plus companies call for ‘global surge’ in AI-powered cyber defense

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and others say there’s a narrow “defenders’ window” to strengthen security before AI-powered attacks become more sophisticated.

OpenAI: Agent behavior that led to Hugging Face intrusion formed in May

The push to designate AI as the next critical infrastructure sector

Government

• FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption

• Jail time for Maine child in 764 marks turning point in federal law enforcement

Technology

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

• The Collective Cyber Defense letter wrote your next vendor questionnaire

Threats

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

• Dogged Russia-based botnet dismantled after 23-year run

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• ‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure