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The golden age of scammers: AI-powered phishing

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Re: The golden age of scammers: AI-powered phishing

#11

Post by nradov »

6510 wrote: post #8
29athrowaway wrote: post #3

On YouTube, I saw a deepfake of Elon Musk asking people to scan a QR code and buy crypto.

When I typed my phone number in the box on "Musk" "investment" website my landline rang instantly after entering the last digit. It was definitely an onkeydown event. A friendly fast talking man in an extremely busy sounding (fake) call center asked me if I was $name_I_put_in_the_form. The voices in the background were people further down the sign up process. I said yes, then asked how he got my number. He said I jus…

It sounds like you confuse easily?

Re: The golden age of scammers: AI-powered phishing

#12

Post by 6510 »

desolved wrote: post #10
6510 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I typed my phone number in the box on "Musk" "investment" website my landline rang instantly after entering the last digit. It was definitely an onkeydown event. A friendly fast talking man in an extremely busy sounding (fake) call center asked me if I was $name_I_put_in_the_form. The voices in the background were people further down the sign up process. I said yes, then asked how he got my number. He said I jus…

Why did you do that? Did you think it was real?

For laughs

Re: The golden age of scammers: AI-powered phishing

#13

Post by ethbr1 »

WesternWind wrote: post #2

Hey, just going to say what I've been telling folks IRL, if you are reading this, and your parents and family members aren't tech savvy, you need to set them up with two factor authentication now. Because you know how to do that, and it's so much easier than helping them when they get hacked.

As evidence of the current state of play:

Friend receives an email from ISP, asking her to contact them.

She searches, comes across a "customer service number" on a legit looking page, calls them up.

(Whoever she called) plays out a 30 minute charade about how she's been flagged by IRS for illegal activity and is about to have her business accounts frozen, including multiple phone transfers to "another party" (played by different people) to boost authenticity.

And during this whole time, they not once asked her for any "red flag" information (e.g. account #, SSN).

Instead, it seemed to be a shell game of extracting limited information (last 3 of your account #?), then having "unrelated" parties parrot that back as proof of their "working for the government."

I expect it would have eventually escalated into an actionable ask, but they were definitely playing the intermediate-term game.

If not for the utter moral black hole of the endeavor, I'd be kind of impressed.

Re: The golden age of scammers: AI-powered phishing

#14

Post by sroussey »

advael wrote: post #6
darefalcon wrote: post #4

It’s actually worse than that - AI powered phishing sites will also copy your device profile and mouse, gesture and keyboard signature and use this to get past common anti-fraud techniques like device fingerprinting and behavioural biometrics.

I mean, the mere existence of said biometrics imply that they're inferrable and thus bad security, like basically all biometrics

And yet, used extensively

Re: The golden age of scammers: AI-powered phishing

#15

Post by [deleted] »

WesternWind wrote: post #2

Hey, just going to say what I've been telling folks IRL, if you are reading this, and your parents and family members aren't tech savvy, you need to set them up with two factor authentication now. Because you know how to do that, and it's so much easier than helping them when they get hacked.

[deleted]

Re: The golden age of scammers: AI-powered phishing

#16

Post by nubinetwork »

29athrowaway wrote: post #3

On YouTube, I saw a deepfake of Elon Musk asking people to scan a QR code and buy crypto.

On twitch this a daily occurrence... and not just elon, it's mrbeast, kaicenat, and ishowspeed as well.

(That is, on top of all the other "free drops/skins" impersonation that twitch can't seem to shut down)

Re: The golden age of scammers: AI-powered phishing

#17

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

ethbr1 wrote: post #13
WesternWind wrote: post #2

Hey, just going to say what I've been telling folks IRL, if you are reading this, and your parents and family members aren't tech savvy, you need to set them up with two factor authentication now. Because you know how to do that, and it's so much easier than helping them when they get hacked.

As evidence of the current state of play: Friend receives an email from ISP, asking her to contact them. She searches, comes across a "customer service number" on a legit looking page, calls them up. (Whoever she called) plays out a 30 minute charade about how she's been flagged by IRS for illegal activity and is about to have her business accounts frozen, including multiple phone transfers to "another party" (played…

I shouldn't, but sometimes I play along just to see what the scam looks like.

Last time I did this, it took three days of texting my new friend before it was finally clear that what she really wanted more than anything was to teach me to trade cryptocurrency.

Once, I thought I had her, because she spelled D&D like: D&D, but she played it off real cool and just explained that her English isn't that great so she used translation software.

In retrospect I think that all of her probing questions about my Svirfneblin cleric were because she later intended call him up and teach him to trade cryptocurrency. I like to think he's in some scammer's database now, causing confusion. He'd like that too.

Once I understood what she was after, I explained that my problem with cryptocurrency was that it resembled money too closely and really what I'd like to do with blockchains is to do away with money in favor of something entirely different.

Her training dataset had not prepared her for this conversation, so it was quite clear when her human handler took over. They were very rude, unlike their AI pet, and tried to bully me into sharing other people's contact info, which is when I lost interest.

Re: The golden age of scammers: AI-powered phishing

#18

Post by h4kor »

pixl97 wrote: post #5
29athrowaway wrote: post #3

On YouTube, I saw a deepfake of Elon Musk asking people to scan a QR code and buy crypto.

Yep these are super common, especially on days spacex is launching starship. They only live broadcast it on X so it allows these scammers to step in and attempt to trick people.

I watched the last starship launch on a scam YouTube stream. It was 30 minutes delayed, which a thought was because Musk wanted to promote Twitter. They said multiple times that Elon will announce something big after the launch. Directly after lift off it cut to Elon holding a speech and I only noticed this been a scam channel when he talked about the QR code and crypto.

Re: The golden age of scammers: AI-powered phishing

#19

Post by MontagFTB »

WesternWind wrote: post #2

Hey, just going to say what I've been telling folks IRL, if you are reading this, and your parents and family members aren't tech savvy, you need to set them up with two factor authentication now. Because you know how to do that, and it's so much easier than helping them when they get hacked.

If you are your family’s de facto IT support, it is worth considering Seraph Secure, which can detect when someone might be falling prey to an online scam and can notify you (among other things).

https://www.seraphsecure.com/

Re: The golden age of scammers: AI-powered phishing

#20

Post by kazinator »

29athrowaway wrote: post #3

On YouTube, I saw a deepfake of Elon Musk asking people to scan a QR code and buy crypto.

> asking people to scan a QR code and buy crypto

That's necessary for realism.

If the deepfake were doing or saying something decent, that would be a dead giveaway.

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