US cybersecurity chief dumps sensitive documents on chatgpt

Madhu Gautamkala, the acting head of the US Cyber ​​and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), has been revealed to have uploaded sensitive contract documents to ChatGPT after taking charge of the security agency. This was revealed by the American magazine Politico in its report.

According to the Politico report, the incident triggered several automated security warnings designed to prevent the theft of government content from federal networks.

This serious mistake by Indian-origin Dr. Madhu Gautamkala, an aide to Donald Trump, has also been highlighted because he took special permission from the office of the CISA chief information officer to use ChatGPT after joining the agency in May.

According to Politico, all the information uploaded by Gautamkala to ChatGPT is shared with the company that owns the AI ​​tool, OpenAI, which means that this content can be used to respond to prompts from other users. OpenAI’s app has more than 700 million active users.

At the time, ChatGPT was blocked for other Homeland Security employees. The report said that Gutamakala pressured the security agency to let him use ChatGPT, and then misused it.

Politico reported that the files uploaded by Gutamakala to ChatGPT were not classified, but they included security agency contractual documents marked with a “For Official Use Only” symbol.

The report said that last August, SESA’s security systems had issued multiple warnings about these uploads, which led to an internal investigation into Gutamakala, but it is not clear what the outcome of that investigation was.

Marcy McCarty, the public affairs director for the US cyber agency, told Politico that Gutamakala was temporarily allowed to use ChatGPT under Homeland Security controls.

Indian-born Gautamkala is currently the most senior political official at SISA, the federal agency responsible for protecting government networks from sophisticated hackers from adversaries like Russia and China.

He has more than 24 years of experience in information technology. He holds a PhD in information systems from Dakota State University, an MBA in engineering and technology management from the University of Dallas, an MS in computer science from the University of Texas at Arlington, and a BE in electronics and communications engineering from Andhra University.