I’m a hacking expert and AI has made it ‘nearly impossible’ to spot bank-emptying attack – signs you’re a target
EXPERTS have warned that AI could make it impossible to tell whether an email is a scam or not.
Scammers are now employing artificial intelligence (AI) to rob people of their hard-earned cash, according to experts at , a managed service provider.
Phishing, specifically, might become more dangerous thanks to advances in AI.
"AI definitely has scope to increase the effectiveness of cyber-crime, mainly through ‘better’ phishing emails," said Paul Mardling, CTO at Redcentric.
“Effectively, it brings a whole new meaning to ‘phishing’, by enabling cybercriminals to automate personalized attacks," he added.
WHAT IS PHISHING?
Phishing is a scam where attackers deceive people into revealing sensitive information.
Normally, the goal of the scammer is to steal a user's banking information, identity, or passwords.
Although in some cases, the criminals are trying to distribute malware, or malicious codes that can infect your device.
However, with the help of AI, now these attacks are "even more indistinguishable from real emails and real people," Mardling said.
To help people combat these sorts of attacks, Mardling shared some signs to watch out for.
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"Whilst AI is making it a lot more difficult to tell whether an email is a scam or not, there are still a few key indicators you can look out for to determine whether it is genuine or not," Mardling said.
SIGNS AN EMAIL IS A PHISHING SCAM
The first sign a scammer might be phishing you using AI is an email that is "too perfectly" written.
"Before AI was used by scammers, it would have been easy to spot a fake email due to the number of grammatical errors it included," Mardling noted.
“However, the introduction of AI technologies now means quite the opposite, and the technology will be able to mimic a similar level of spelling mistakes the person who would usually write the email would. Or, it may be written so perfectly that it seems suspicious."
Instead, Mardling says to focus on the content of the email and what is asking of you.
“If you are ever unsure if it has been written by AI or not, you can try copying and pasting the content into an AI detector, which will tell you how likely it is to have been written by AI," he recommended.
Another surefire sign of a scammer is if the email is sent from a public email domain.
"No legitimate organization will send emails from an address that ends ‘@gmail.com’, not even Google," Mardling said.
"Most companies will have their own email domain, for example, genuine emails from Google will read ‘@google.com."
A third sign of a scammer is a message that includes unexpected attachments or links.
"A phishing email will always contain a payload, or include a ‘call to action’. These will usually come in the form of an attachment or link, which will be infected," Mardling explained.
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“The purpose of these attachments or links is to capture sensitive information, such as login credentials, credit card details, phone numbers, and account numbers," he added.
“As soon as you spot these, you know it’s likely to be a scam. It’s vital that you never open an attachment or click on any links within the body of the email unless you are confident that the message is legitimate," he continued.