A 15-year-old student used ChatGPT to disrupt an anime streaming service
A 15-year-old student is suspected of carrying out a cyberattack on a popular anime streaming service, which resulted in the cancellation of approximately 46,000 user subscriptions. The teenager used ChatGPT while planning the attack, and this is the second such incident in the past six months.
Tokyo police arrested a 15-year-old high school student on suspicion of a cyberattack on Bandai Channel, a streaming site specializing in anime. As a result of the attack, 46,000 user accounts were forcibly deleted.
The teenager analyzed the service’s network traffic, found a vulnerability, and used ChatGPT to write malware that automatically accessed other users’ accounts and triggered the unsubscription process. The attack took place back in November 2025, when the accused was a third-year middle school student.
The damage was so severe that Bandai Channel was down for an entire month. During that time, the company worked to mitigate the effects of the hack and refund affected subscribers. As a result of the breach, users’ email addresses and usernames were leaked, but no instances of their misuse have been reported so far.
During questioning, the student admitted his guilt and stated that he had taught himself programming and had developed an interest in hacking along the way. He had no particular animosity toward this specific platform; he simply took advantage of the system’s ease of access.
It is noted that this is already the second such case in Japan in the past six months. Both incidents share a common trend: teenagers are turning chatbots into tools for attacks that previously required significantly more time and skill, writes Asahi.
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