The acting head of the US cybersecurity agency CISA, Madhu Gottumukkala, uploaded confidential contract documents marked «for official use only» to the AI chatbot ChatGPT.
The acting head of the US cybersecurity agency CISA, Madhu Gottumukkala, uploaded confidential contract documents marked «for official use only» to the AI chatbot ChatGPT.
According to Politico, citing anonymous officials, Madhu Gottumukkala, appointed by US President Donald Trump, triggered several automated security alerts. They are designed to prevent the theft or inadvertent leakage of government files from federal networks.
Sources say that shortly after joining the agency in May 2025, Gottumukkala requested special permission from the Office of the Chief Information Officer (CISA) to use ChatGPT. At the time, it was blocked for other agency employees.
None of the files Gottumukkala gave ChatGPT were classified, but among the materials were CISA contract documents marked «for official use only,» which is the government’s designation for information considered confidential and not subject to release.
Gottumukkala is currently the top official at the CISA agency, which is tasked with protecting federal networks from professional hackers, including those working for Russia and China.
Any content uploaded to the public version of ChatGPT, which Gottumukkala used, is shared with ChatGPT’s owner, OpenAI, which means it can be used to answer queries from other users of the app. OpenAI says the app has more than 700 million active users.
A CISA representative said Gottumukkala’s use of ChatGPT was «short-term and limited.»
It is noted that after being appointed to CISA, Madhu Gottumukkala failed a counterintelligence polygraph test, which the Department of Homeland Security later called «unauthorized,» and subsequently suspended six full-time employees from accessing classified information.
Recall that in 2024, Jack Teixeira, a US National Guard soldier who leaked confidential Pentagon documents (including about the course of the war in Ukraine) to Discord, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
