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How Is AI Used in Phishing? Scammer Secrets Inside

February 12, 2024
11:15 am
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How is AI used in phishing campaigns? This question often lands you in a scary world – where you might also wonder how is AI making phishing attacks more sophisticated. AI holds the power to ease a variety of tasks, and that’s how it’s contributing to phishing campaigns, too.

In this regard, Microsoft states, “Scammers consider AI tech a gold mine for phishing schemes.”

So, to clear up your confusion, this article focuses on the various ways scammers use AI in phishing attacks, along with AI spam detection methods and relevant insights. Keep reading to unfold the secret tricks of scammers and prepare yourself better.

How Do Scammers Use AI in Phishing Campaigns? When AI Goes Wrong

Scammers use AI in phishing campaigns by benefiting from the language efficiency of ChatGPT, using voice cloning or replication, faking selfies in chats, automating data retrieval and organization, performing wide-scale victim targeting, and generating scam websites and social media profiles.

The Language Efficiency of ChatGPT

The language efficiency of ChatGPT effectively helps the scammers correct their grammatical errors and spelling mistakes in the phishing emails. ChatGPT can work with about 20 languages, which makes a quite good number – reducing the chances of instant identification of spam emails.

Now, you can not spot the fraudulent emails by simply looking at their erroneous content. You can say that ChatGPT, the AI phishing generator, has made scammers smarter. They won’t fail at writing grammatically correct and error-free content anymore.

All of it adds to the fact that ChatGPT phishing or AI-generated phishing emails are more powerful and difficult to detect than regular spam emails.

Voice Cloning or Replication

Voice cloning or replication technology lets scammers copy the voice of any individual they want to target. They start with analyzing the voice from the to-be-victim’s video available on the internet, followed by calling the individual’s family or friends with the replicated voice.

Such AI-based phishing attacks can easily trick you or your loved ones, and you might end up revealing your sensitive information to a scammer. Imagine receiving a call with your brother’s voice asking you for some urgent money transfer. You won’t deny it, right? Know that fake emergency calls fall into the category of the most common AI phishing examples.

So, it is how AI helps in vishing (voice or VoIP phishing), one of the types of phishing.

Faking Selfies in Conversations

Sending fake selfies in conversations is another way scammers use to manipulate you into believing that you are conversing with one of your friends or family. Fake image generation through AI is as easy as falling off a log, and that’s what attracts scammers.

As informed by ABC News, California’s Department of Financial Protection & Innovation has also warned that generative AI can be used to impersonate people in order to commit fraud. It means the threat of AI is real. Even if you receive a picture or a selfie in a conversation, the originality of the conversation is not guaranteed.

Using AI To Fetch and Organize the Targeted Data

AI doesn’t stay behind even when it comes to spear phishing. It facilitates the retrieval and organization of the targeted data. Moreover, with the help of AI, scammers can target multiple individuals in a single attempt, which would be difficult otherwise.

For example, some scammers have already hacked a company’s website. Now, they can use AI to get the details they want and organize them for further fraudulent activities. Moreover, consider a CEO phishing email example, where AI helps in tricking multiple employees of a company at once. This way, a scammer would be able to receive maximum information and money transfers.

AI-Generated Scam Websites and Social Media Profiles

Website creation wasn’t as easy as it has become with the introduction of AI. Scammers can now generate a fully functional scam website with minimal coding experience. That’s how they can trick you into placing orders and buying from them.

Think about it this way. You were searching for a classy handbag, and that’s where you came across a scam website faking a legitimate brand. The website looked professional. Thus, you placed an order and provided your credit card details. Here is where the scammers won.

Even if you choose the cash-on-delivery method, you might still lose your money in exchange for some useless stuff. So, be careful, always.

AI-Based Phishing Attacks: What Will a Scammer Ask You To Do?

A scammer will ask you to either click on a link or confirm your personal or payment information. A spam email might show concern regarding having noticed some suspicious log-in attempts, including an unexpected invoice, offering a coupon for a gift, or claiming a problem with your bank account.

Moreover, you can even expect a scammer to inform you about your eligibility to register for a government fund. All of the mentioned phishing email examples for training are the tricks of scammers to steal your money or sensitive information and negatively affect your reputation.

Discover common email phishing tactics now.

Three Rules That AI Could Use To Detect Spam

With the increased frequency and enhanced powerfulness of phishing techniques, the need for AI phishing email detection procedures arises. There are various deep learning and machine learning methods that can be used to detect spam, like VoIP Spam Detection, Naive Bayes, and Random Forest.

VoIP Spam Detection: It is a model that uses the duration of calls between two users to differentiate between spam callers and genuine callers.
Naive Bayes: It is a probabilistic algorithm based on the Bayes Theorem. It is used for email spam filtering in data analytics. You’ll see it working by categorizing your emails into different buckets and marking them as important, promotions, spam, etc.
Random Forest: This algorithm is an implementation of bagging where each tree in an ensemble of decision trees is constructed from a bootstrap sample of messages from the training set (Breiman, 2003).

See how can you identify a phishing email instantly.

Reporting Phishing Emails: Understand the Process

Phishing attempts aren’t meant to be ignored. It’s always better to report them. Now, if you are dealing with questions like “How do I report a suspicious email?,” “Where to forward a phishing email?,” or “Where do I send phishing emails?” Here is the solution: [email protected].

Once you report on the given email address, the National Cyber Security Centre will look into it. That’s how simple the process is.

FAQ

Can Phishing Email Install Malware on Your System?

Yes, a phishing email can install malware on your system. Therefore, you should avoid clicking any links or downloading any suspicious stuff sent through emails in your inbox.

Why Is Phishing a Popular Tool With Cybercriminals?

Phishing is a popular tool with cybercriminals because it is easier to trick individuals into clicking on malicious links than escaping through a system’s security mechanism. Moreover, the usage of emails is quite common, and phishing doesn’t require any technical skills.

Conclusion

Now, you must have got your answer to how is AI used in phishing. Learning about the secret methods of scammers not only increases your awareness level but also helps you protect your business reputation. Here you go with this article’s recap.