Guarding Against ChatGPT Threats: Identifying and Addressing Vulnerabilities

This study examines the dual nature of ChatGPT as a potential tool that can act both as an attacker and a defender in the cybersecurity domain. It highlights how this tool can both enable sophisticated phishing attacks and also help defend against them. The research focuses on a growing problem: cybercriminals using AI to create phishing content. This allows them to carry out attacks with unprecedented scale and sophistication. Utilizing ChatGPT's advanced linguistic analysis, we developed a Python-based automation tool that leverages ChatGPT's API to enhance phishing detection mechanisms and assess the model's effectiveness in identifying phishing attempts through both text and image analysis. Our findings highlight ChatGPT's potential in detecting sophisticated phishing attacks, alongside the challenges it faces in differentiating between legitimate and fraudulent communications absent of clear phishing indicators. The study proposes innovative strategies for leveraging ChatGPT's phishing simulation and detection capabilities, offering insights into future-proofing cybersecurity efforts against evolving AI technologies. Through a methodical evaluation of ChatGPT versions in detecting phishing content and detailed security analysis, this investigation contributes to the ongoing discourse on the responsible and ethical deployment of AI tools in cybersecurity, advocating for robust countermeasures to mitigate AI-augmented threats.