Investigation uncovers underground market reselling discounted LLM tokens in China

An investigation by Matt Lenhard documents a market primarily active in China where resellers aggregate and resell access to large language model (LLM) tokens at discounted prices. The market operates by pooling API keys from various sources to create a proxy service that undercuts standard API pricing.

The proxy infrastructure relies on open-source software, notably one-api and its actively developed fork new-api, which are designed to load-balance requests across multiple API credentials. These tools are legitimate API management products repurposed for resale operations.

Buyers of these discounted tokens include entities seeking cost savings, those aiming to bypass geo-restrictions, and actors collecting data for model distillation purposes.

Operators of these resale networks employ several tactics to reduce costs, including abusing free trial offers, routing traffic through unprotected support bots, and using stolen credit cards or chargeback attacks to fund API usage. This ecosystem creates a profit motive for continuously discovering and exploiting unprotected endpoints.

Commentary accompanying the report emphasizes the need for LLM vendors to implement stricter controls on API keys, such as hard spending caps, to prevent abuse and unexpected billing shocks for developers.