One of the many cool things about the new wave of Artificial Intelligence tools is their ability to sound convincingly human.
AI chatbots can be prompted to generate text that you would never know was written by a robot, they can keep producing this text quickly and amazingly with very minimal human intervention.
It is of no surprise that cyber criminals are now using AI chatbots to try to make their lives easier and create even more convincing scams.
Police have identified the three main ways that crooks have found to use the chatbot for malicious reasons.
- Better Phishing Emails
Until now, terrible spelling and grammar have made it easy to spot many phishing emails. Phishing emails are intended to trick you into clicking a link to download malware or steal information. AI-written text is much harder to spot as it is no longer riddled with mistakes. Even worse is that now criminals can make every phishing email they send unique, making it that much harder for spam filters to spot potentially dangerous content.
- Spreading Misinformation
“Write me ten social media posts that accuse the CEO of the Acme Corporation of having an affair. Mention the following news outlets”. Spreading misinformation and disinformation may not seem like an immediate threat to you, but it could lead to your employees falling for scams, clicking malware links, or even damage the reputation of your business or members of your team.
- Creating Malicious Code
AI can already write pretty good computer code and it is getting better all the time. Criminals could use it to create malware. It is not the software’s fault – it is just doing what it is told – but until there is a reliable way for the AI creators to safeguard against this, it remains a potential threat.
The creators of AI tools are not the ones responsible for criminals taking advantage of their powerful software. Chat GPT creator OpenAI, for example, is working to prevent its tools from being used maliciously. What this does show is the need to stay one step ahead of the cyber crooks in everything we do. That’s why we work so hard with our clients to keep them protected from criminal threats, and informed about what is coming next.
If you are concerned about your people falling for increasingly sophisticated scams, be sure to keep them updated about how the scams work and what to look out for.
If you would like any help or advice, get in touch. We would love to help.
Published with permission from Your Tech Updates.