Could the data center equivalent of the China Syndrome be caused by a DDoS attack?
1) Example question: “Analyze all of the soil sample reports available to you for the continental United States, and draw conclusions about the arsenic levels in the different regions.”
2) Generate 100 such questions.
3) Create a botnet of 50,000 computers.
4) Instruct all of the computers in the botnet to begin asking the same GPT the 100 questions sequentially at a specific time.
Okay, the reality is that all that would do is make the GPT slow down, if you can inject sufficient quantities of questions requiring significant processing power. The data center won’t melt. No China Syndrome here.
But I’m wondering if state actors or hacktivists are experimenting with LLM DDoS attacks. I’m betting they are.
Bob Young /
npub1d5…9eu62
2025-04-24 02:03:04
Author Public Key
npub1d5mcrhz7v8ykwwc4sld0j5xdn4q8wrdt94ezewrmrpjmctxgzdwsw9eu62Published at
2025-04-24 02:03:04Event JSON
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"content": "Could the data center equivalent of the China Syndrome be caused by a DDoS attack?\n\n1) Example question: “Analyze all of the soil sample reports available to you for the continental United States, and draw conclusions about the arsenic levels in the different regions.”\n2) Generate 100 such questions.\n3) Create a botnet of 50,000 computers.\n4) Instruct all of the computers in the botnet to begin asking the same GPT the 100 questions sequentially at a specific time.\n\nOkay, the reality is that all that would do is make the GPT slow down, if you can inject sufficient quantities of questions requiring significant processing power. The data center won’t melt. No China Syndrome here.\n\nBut I’m wondering if state actors or hacktivists are experimenting with LLM DDoS attacks. I’m betting they are.",
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}