The widespread availability of selfies on social media platforms has become a factor that has contributed to the fueling of artificial intelligence-powered scams.
Center for Strategic & International Studies researcher Julia Dickson said last week during a conversation with media representatives that cybercriminals steal profile photos of users of the mentioned virtual platforms and their personally identifiable information or purchase the relevant data on underground marketplaces. Then, as she noted, scammers leverage the specified information to craft deepfakes that allow them to get around digital identification systems and Know Your Customer (KYC) measures.
Also, the media, referring to a report from identity verification Socure, underlined that scammers, without encountering any significant difficulties or obstacles, can pull selfies from a person’s social media profiles and then use it with stolen personally identifiable information to create a phony ID.
Moreover, scammers can take headshots and create full photos of a person, using artificial intelligence to generate natural-looking backgrounds. As part of this practice, criminals can bypass security measures that require users to take a live picture of themselves.
Scammers can also create realistic images of fake people by asking generative artificial intelligence image generators to make selfies based on physical descriptions.
Besides, Deepanker Saxena, head of document verification products at Socure, stated during a conversation with media representatives that sometimes scammers take old photos of people and use machine intelligence to age them to match their appearance in the present day.
Mzukisi Rusi, Entersekt’s vice president for product development: authentication products, noted in an interview last month that each new technology brings new risks.
It is worth noting that as of today, the phone is not just a frequently used device, but a part of a person’s daily life, providing access to a rapidly expanding and at the same time deepening digital dimension of reality. Against the background of the implementation of this practice, cybercriminals have actually gained a new space of opportunities. Phones have been a conduit for one-time passwords. At the same time, an attacker can trick a mobile carrier into thinking that a legitimate customer wants a new number, has lost the phone, or wants a new SIM card, which means that one-time passwords can also be compromised.
In other cases, fraudsters attack their victims using push notifications, which eventually tire or confuse people to the point where they give up, follow the link, and end up at the mercy of criminals.
Mzukisi Rusi stated that financial institutions must be one step ahead and constantly evolve their defenses.
It is worth noting that law enforcement agencies have already paid attention to the threats posed by cybercriminals. For example, last year, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued an alert to help banks spot scams associated with using deepfake media created as part of leveraging generative artificial intelligence.
FinCEN director Andrea Gacki stated that while generative machine intelligence holds tremendous potential as a new technology, bad actors aim to exploit it to defraud American businesses and consumers, including financial institutions and their customers. Also, in the relevant context, it was separately noted that the vigilance of financial institutions regarding the use of deepfakes and reporting of related suspicious activity will help protect the financial system of the United States and innocent Americans from the abuse of these tools.
Against the background of the active development of advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, the issue of cybersecurity is growing in urgency. In this context, it is worth noting separately that AI makes the activities of scammers more sophisticated. One of the tools for countering the corresponding threat in the cyber environment is the personal awareness of users. For example, an Internet search query such as how to know if my camera is hacked will allow anyone to get information about signs of unauthorized access to the device. Digital literacy is an effective tool for combating cybercrime. At the same time, relevant knowledge should be updated periodically because criminals tend to use the most advanced technologies in their activities. It is also worth noting separately that artificial intelligence can be used to counter virtual crimes committed by leveraging AI.
