Criminals are becoming more adept at exploiting artificial intelligence, putting ordinary citizens at a whole new level of danger. Even in Finland, you should be prepared for, for example, phone calls that, despite their credibility, are scams.
- In the scams of the near future, the use of artificial intelligence will be emphasized.
- Enable strong or two-factor authentication on all online platforms.
- If you have fallen victim to a scammer, tell us about your experiences using the form at the end of the article.
– AI, AI, AI, answers the information security expert and research director of Adminize oy Sami Laiho to the question of what kind of things will be highlighted in online scams in the near future.
– Artificial intelligence will change all methods of attack and make them harder to detect, he continues.
For example, according to Laiho, entities that manufacture mass attacks will benefit from artificial intelligence (AI) in many ways.
– One person can use it to make personalized contacts with thousands of victims, warns Laiho.
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The language barrier has been broken
Over the years, Finns may have been lulled into the idea that scams are easy to recognize as scams. This has been made possible, for example, by obvious linguistic clumsiness in communication.
However, artificial intelligence does not suffer from the same problems as fraudsters in foreign languages or traditional machine translation programs, so it is time to wake up to reality at the latest.
– Language barriers no longer protect. The artificial intelligence speaks fluent Finnish as well as English.
Be prepared for deep fakes
Instead of Kapula language scam messages, in the future, targeted contacts will also show various deep fake audio and video content.
Cheating may sound like science fiction, but it shouldn’t be treated as such. If the threat is not considered real, it can be even more difficult to recognize the scam in real time.
The designer of the deepfake content is able to use artificial intelligence to define everything that the person seen in the video or heard on the audio tape says and put the words in their mouth.
In the future, for example, a child calling a parent in distress may be a scam.
– We are getting to the point where it can even be a video call where you can see your child talking. We will definitely move to the point where we need a strong identification to interact with each other, Laiho stated To Yle last summer.
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Artificial intelligence unfortunately offers criminals a lot of opportunities to make more believable scams than before, warns Sami Laiho. Sami Laiho
Identify social hacking
According to Laiho, so-called social hacking is an integral part of both current and future online scams.
– Tens of millions of euros leave Finland every year, for example in the form of romance scams, investment scams and CEO scams, says Laiho.
According to Nordea too, such scams are on the rise and will pose a clear threat to Finns in 2024 as well.
Laiho is worried about the opportunities that artificial intelligence offers to criminals, because even text-based scams are currently fooling some people.
– Based on just chatting or e-mail, it is believed that the person is really willing to marry you and move to Finland, if only to get the money for the plane ticket, Laiho describes the usual romance scam.
– Or a large bill is paid to the wrong account because the CEO’s email says so, or money is invested in something because the website says that a person who is one of Kone’s owners advises that, he says about CEO and investment scams.
Fake voice and video calls are indeed a real threat from Laiho.
– If once a text-only prompt is enough, then you can just think about what a genuine video call from the same person can do.
Laiho advises how to act if you receive a suspicious contact.
– If a person you know contacts you by voice or video, you can always say that you will call them back if you doubt whether the caller is who they say they are.
According to Laiho, strong or two-step authentication should always be used in all services. Typically, it can be activated in the settings of your user account; from the same place where the password for that service is also changed.
Remember the rule of thumb
Laiho says that the motivation behind romance, investment and CEO scams is money.
– In these types of scams, large sums of money are swindled at once, so they are attractive to the attacker and potentially destructive to the victim.
Laiho suggests a rule of thumb that you can use to avoid being scammed, even if your own alarm bells don’t go off right away.
– Whenever money changes hands, it’s worth stopping, thinking and asking someone else’s opinion.
CEO scams refer to a type of scam where a company employee is lured, for example, to click on a harmful link in the name of the company’s management. The prompt can be, for example, paying a bill or making a bank transfer.
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So-called social hacking will be emphasized in the scams of the future. Adobe Stock
Protection against the Predator spyware “very difficult”
The development of technology can be seen in the criminals’ toolbox in ways other than the increase in the use of artificial intelligence.
For example, the Predator malware has been in the news from time to time in the past couple of years. According to Laiho, it used five different previously unidentified vulnerabilities to get into phones equipped with the Android and IOS operating systems.
– The malware was used for espionage and was sold to government actors at a very high price, Laiho says.
In Laiho’s opinion, ordinary citizens do not need to worry about spyware like Predator.
– It is very difficult to protect yourself from such a program, but fortunately, it typically targets a very small group of very influential decision-makers.
The biggest risks in the IT sector
According to consulting company Ernst & Young (EY), new types of risks are affecting the telecommunications market. In particular, the transition of services and tools to the cloud, the proliferation of open solutions, and artificial intelligence cause gray hair for company management.
European Community recently published a listing of the ten biggest risks in the telecommunications industry in 2024. Security took the top spot.
– Security issues are at the top of the telecommunications industry’s risk list, and the result is not surprising, EY Finland’s TMT business development director Peik Schulman says in the announcement.
– The opportunities brought by artificial intelligence are enormous, and it can act as a catalyst for new innovations and especially for the efficiency of business processes. To harness artificial intelligence and minimize the risks it causes, visionary leadership and the ability to see the long-term effects of artificial intelligence are needed, Schulman continues.