- Interpol says GenAI-powered fraud is 4.5 times more profitable
- AI boosts phishing, deepfakes and social engineering campaigns
- Agentic AI could enable autonomous end-to-end fraud in the future
Cybercriminals and fraudsters who use generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) are 4.5 times more profitable than those who don’t, Interpol says.
In a new research paper, titled “Global Financial Fraud Threat Assessment,” the international law enforcement agency said AI “significantly increases both the effectiveness and efficiency” of fraud campaigns, suggesting its popularity in the criminal underworld will only grow.
There are several ways that bad guys can use GenAI, but the most obvious one seems to be – polishing phishing content. Before the advent of artificial intelligence, the best way to spot a phishing email was to simply proofread it, as the scammers were usually non-native speakers and the messages were filled with errors that made it clear they were not from legitimate brands.
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With AI to refine and reword the content, proofreading is no longer a viable option and phishing emails became more successful and impactful.
But it’s just the “gateway drug” for AI-powered fraud. High-level fraudsters use AI to deepfake, creating hyper-convincing voice clones from almost no source material.
To make matters worse, the dark web is full of widely available kits (deepfake-as-a-service) that further lower the barrier to entry and make it only a matter of dollars to start an impersonation campaign.
“Over the past two years, technology has continued to enable and enhance financial fraud, allowing criminal networks to scale operations exponentially with minimal investment,” Interpol said. “Digital technology and AI, in particular, have dramatically transformed social engineering techniques and victim profiling, enabling fraudsters to construct highly convincing fraud environments.
Interpol also discussed Agentic AI – systems that “can autonomously plan and execute complete fraud campaigns, from reconnaissance to ransom demands.” For villains, it sounds promising, but it has not yet reached the level of mass use as GenAI. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen. After all, the promise of agent AI has yet to be fully realized in the legal world as well.
Via The register
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