Curated from Latest from TechRadar US in News,opinion — Here’s what matters right now:
Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit were brought crashing into the 21st century in December 2024 with their latest adventure, Vengeance Most Fowl . The film challenges our growing dependence on smart technology in the form of a robotic garden gnome, built by Wallace to support his gardening business, which is then hacked by the Kubrick-esque Feathers McGraw for his own nefarious purposes. One of the more interesting but less commented on parts of the film shows Gromit cautiously entering his house and being greeted by what he thinks is Wallace’s reassuring voice, only to be confronted with Feathers and the robotic gnome. Technology’s ability to mimic linguistic patterns, to clone a person’s voice and understand and respond to questions has developed dramatically in the last few years. This has not gone unnoticed by the world’s criminals and scammers, with the result that social engineering attacks are not only on the rise but are more sophisticated and targeted than ever. What are social engineering attacks? Cybercriminal social engineering manipulates a target by creating a false narrative that exploits the victim’s vulnerability (whether that is their willingness to trust people, their financial worries or their emotional insecurity). The result is that the victim unwittingly but willingly hands over money and/or information to the perpetrator. Most social engineering scams consist of the following stages: (1) making connection with the victim (“the means”), (2) building a false narrative (usually with a sense of urgency or time limitation) (“the lie”) and (3) persuading the target to take the suggested action (e.g. transferring money or providing personal details) (“the ask”). Usually, stage 2 (the lie) is where most people spot the scam for what it is, as it is difficult to build and sustain a convincing narrative without messing up eventually. We have all received text messages, emails or social media messages from people purporting to be our friends, long-lost relations in countries we have never been to, or our banks, asking us to provide them with personal information, passwords or money. Historically, such communications were easy to spot, as they bore the hallmarks of a scam: generic greetings and signatures, spelling mistakes, poor or unusual grammar and syntax, inconsistent formatting or suspicious addresses. Liar, liar, pants on…f-AI-re? However, the rapid sophistication of generative AI tools means that it is increasingly easy for criminals to craft and sustain plausible false narratives to ensnare their victims; the “lie” or stage 2 in the social engineering scam. Companies and law enforcement agencies are scrambling to stay ahead of the technological advances and are working hard to predict developments which will be used for social engineering. One potential use case for generative AI in this area is a dynamic lie system, which would automatically contact and interact with potential victims to earn their trust before moving to stage 3
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Original reporting: Latest from TechRadar US in News,opinion