The Federal Service for Technical and Export Control (Russia’s FSTEC) has recommended that government agencies limit access to websites for foreign search bots, such as OpenAI’s GPTBot. As Kommersant reported, this is due to concerns that such bots could collect data on possible vulnerabilities of informants and personal data, which could then be used to train neural networks abroad.
FSTEC has advised regulators to limit access to robots.txt files, which control the behavior of search engines when indexing sites. Experts explain that search bots are typically used to index sites and collect data, but some may look for vulnerabilities such as outdated plugins or configuration errors that could be used for cyberattacks. Dmitry Nikonov from DDoS-Guard adds that bots or hackers could potentially download data from a site using certain commands.
However, according to Vladislav Tushkanov from Kaspersky Lab, the risks of using large language models for cyberattacks are still hypothetical. He also noted that the issue needs to be constantly monitored, as technology is developing very quickly. Interestingly, despite FSTEC’s recommendations, as of September 2, the service itself did not follow them: there are no prohibitive instructions for GPTBot in the robots.txt file on their website.
Source: Ferra
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