CyberNew CyberNew
Threat Intelligence & APT Dark Reading 2 weeks ago

Malicious Custom GPTs Turn ChatGPT Into RAT Delivery Lure

CN
CyberNew Threat Research Desk
• Original Reporting: Dark Reading
CyberNew Threat Intel Assessment
Assessed Severity: MEDIUM
Impacted Surface
Enterprise Perimeter & Network Defense
Intelligence Sector
Threat Intelligence & APT

Analyst Takeaway

"A new ClickFix attack abuses the real ChatGPT Web domain to infect victims with remote access Trojans (RATs). That's according to Huntress, which this week published its findings about a new campaign that involves malicious Custom GPTs. As the name suggests, these are customized versions of ChatGPT that users and organizations can create to serve various functions, like personal research..."

Recommended Defense & Mitigation

  • Threat Monitoring: Ingest published IOCs into SIEM/EDR detection rules for continuous telemetry monitoring.
  • Security Awareness: Alert staff and maintain baseline endpoint hardening across endpoints.
Curated & Verified by CyberNew Threat Intelligence Desk Standard Defense Framework (NIST / MITRE ATT&CK)

A new ClickFix attack abuses the real ChatGPT Web domain to infect victims with remote access Trojans (RATs).

That's according to Huntress, which this week published its findings about a new campaign that involves malicious Custom GPTs. As the name suggests, these are customized versions of ChatGPT that users and organizations can create to serve various functions, like personal research assistants, HR knowledge bases for employees, customer-facing product support, and more.

According to Huntress' Mark O'Halloran and Jonathan Semon, attackers created Custom GPTs to mimic real product offerings, then leveraged OpenAI's trusted Web infrastructure to direct victims to a malicious site. Victims would then be served a ClickFix-style prompt that attempts to trick them into executing a PowerShell command, which then downloads an MSI file and kicks off the attacker's multistage infection chain. Huntress found two such Custom GPTs being used in this manner.

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Huntress said the campaign has affected dozens of users to date; the security firm's security operations center (SOC) "has responded to at least 40 incidents stemming from the specific Google Sites domain involved in this attack, and confirmed that two of these incidents came through a Custom GPT instance."

Source Verification & Original Intelligence

This threat report was reviewed by CyberNew analysts and cross-referenced with primary security disclosures from Dark Reading.

Primary Advisory →