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Category — Deepfake
Deepfake Defense in the Age of AI

Deepfake Defense in the Age of AI

May 13, 2025 AI Security / Zero Trust
The cybersecurity landscape has been dramatically reshaped by the advent of generative AI. Attackers now leverage large language models (LLMs) to impersonate trusted individuals and automate these social engineering tactics at scale.  Let's review the status of these rising attacks, what's fueling them, and how to actually prevent, not detect, them.  The Most Powerful Person on the Call Might Not Be Real Recent threat intelligence reports highlight the growing sophistication and prevalence of AI-driven attacks: Voice Phishing Surge: According to CrowdStrike's 2025 Global Threat Report , there was a 442% increase in voice phishing (vishing) attacks between the first and second halves of 2024, driven by AI-generated phishing and impersonation tactics. Social Engineering Prevalence: Verizon's 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report indicates that social engineering remains a top pattern in breaches, with phishing and pretexting accounting for a significant portion of inc...
New Investment Scams Use Facebook Ads, RDGA Domains, and IP Checks to Filter Victims

New Investment Scams Use Facebook Ads, RDGA Domains, and IP Checks to Filter Victims

May 06, 2025 Deepfake / Online Fraud
Cybersecurity researchers have lifted the lid on two threat actors that orchestrate investment scams through spoofed celebrity endorsements and conceal their activity through traffic distribution systems (TDSes). The activity clusters have been codenamed Reckless Rabbit and Ruthless Rabbit by DNS threat intelligence firm Infoblox. The attacks have been observed to lure victims with bogus platforms, including cryptocurrency exchanges, which are then advertised on social media platforms. An important aspect of these scams is the use of web forms to collect user data. "Reckless Rabbit creates ads on Facebook that lead to fake news articles featuring a celebrity endorsement for the investment platform," security researchers Darby Wise, Piotr Glaska, and Laura da Rocha said . "The article includes a link to the scam platform which contains an embedded web form persuading the user to enter their personal information to 'register' for the investment opportunity....
DPRK Hackers Steal $137M from TRON Users in Single-Day Phishing Attack

DPRK Hackers Steal $137M from TRON Users in Single-Day Phishing Attack

Apr 23, 2025 Malware / Cryptocurrency
Multiple threat activity clusters with ties to North Korea (aka Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK) have been linked to attacks targeting organizations and individuals in the Web3 and cryptocurrency space. "The focus on Web3 and cryptocurrency appears to be primarily financially motivated due to the heavy sanctions that have been placed on North Korea," Google-owned Mandiant said in its M-Trends report for 2025 shared with The Hacker News. "These activities aim to generate financial gains, reportedly funding North Korea's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program and other strategic assets." The cybersecurity firm said DPRK-nexus threat actors have developed custom tools written in a variety of languages such as Golang, C++, and Rust, and are capable of infecting Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. At least three threat activity clusters it tracks as UNC1069, UNC4899, and UNC5342 have been found to target members of the cryptocurren...
cyber security

GenAI Security Best Practices Cheat Sheet

websiteWizCybersecurity / GenAI Security
Secure your GenAI systems fast with 7 must-know best practices to stop data poisoning, model theft, and more—plus ways AI can boost your defenses.
cyber security

Find the Coverage Gaps in Your Security Tools

websitePrelude SecurityContinuous Control Monitoring
Try Prelude free for 14 days to find gaps in your security tools, maximizing the controls you already have.
AI-Powered Social Engineering: Ancillary Tools and Techniques

AI-Powered Social Engineering: Ancillary Tools and Techniques

Feb 14, 2025 Cybercrime / Artificial Intelligence
Social engineering is advancing fast, at the speed of generative AI. This is offering bad actors multiple new tools and techniques for researching, scoping, and exploiting organizations. In a recent communication, the FBI pointed out: 'As technology continues to evolve, so do cybercriminals' tactics.' This article explores some of the impacts of this GenAI-fueled acceleration. And examines what it means for IT leaders responsible for managing defenses and mitigating vulnerabilities. More realism, better pretexting, and multi-lingual attack scenarios Traditional social engineering methods usually involve impersonating someone the target knows. The attacker may hide behind email to communicate, adding some psychological triggers to boost the chances of a successful breach. Maybe a request to act urgently, so the target is less likely to pause and develop doubts. Or making the email come from an employee's CEO, hoping the employee's respect for authority means they won't question...
Top 5 AI-Powered Social Engineering Attacks

Top 5 AI-Powered Social Engineering Attacks

Jan 31, 2025 Artificial Intelligence / Cybercrime
Social engineering has long been an effective tactic because of how it focuses on human vulnerabilities. There's no brute-force 'spray and pray' password guessing. No scouring systems for unpatched software. Instead, it simply relies on manipulating emotions such as trust, fear, and respect for authority, usually with the goal of gaining access to sensitive information or protected systems. Traditionally that meant researching and manually engaging individual targets, which took up time and resources. However, the advent of AI has now made it possible to launch social engineering attacks in different ways, at scale, and often without psychological expertise. This article will cover five ways that AI is powering a new wave of social engineering attacks. The audio deepfake that may have influenced Slovakia elections Ahead of Slovakian parliamentary elections in 2023, a recording emerged that appeared to feature candidate Michal Simecka in conversation with a well-known journalist, M...
Google Warns of Rising Cloaking Scams, AI-Driven Fraud, and Crypto Schemes

Google Warns of Rising Cloaking Scams, AI-Driven Fraud, and Crypto Schemes

Nov 14, 2024 Artificial Intelligence / Cryptocurrency
Google has revealed that bad actors are leveraging techniques like landing page cloaking to conduct scams by impersonating legitimate sites. "Cloaking is specifically designed to prevent moderation systems and teams from reviewing policy-violating content which enables them to deploy the scam directly to users," Laurie Richardson, VP and Head of Trust and Safety at Google, said . "The landing pages often mimic well-known sites and create a sense of urgency to manipulate users into purchasing counterfeit products or unrealistic products." Cloaking refers to the practice of serving different content to search engines like Google and users with the ultimate goal of manipulating search rankings and deceiving users. The tech giant said it has also observed a cloaking trend wherein users clicking on ads are redirected via tracking templates to scareware sites that claim their devices are compromised with malware and lead them to other phony customer support sites, w...
Eliminating AI Deepfake Threats: Is Your Identity Security AI-Proof?

Eliminating AI Deepfake Threats: Is Your Identity Security AI-Proof?

Oct 25, 2024 Artificial Intelligence / Identity Security
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has rapidly evolved from a futuristic concept to a potent weapon in the hands of bad actors. Today, AI-based attacks are not just theoretical threats—they're happening across industries and outpacing traditional defense mechanisms.  The solution, however, is not futuristic. It turns out a properly designed identity security platform is able to deliver defenses against AI impersonation fraud. Read more about how a secure-by-design identity platform can eliminate AI deepfake fraud and serve as a critical component in this new era of cyber defense.  The Growing Threat of AI Impersonation Fraud Recent incidents highlight the alarming potential of AI-powered fraud: A staggering $25 million was fraudulently transferred during a video call where deepfakes impersonated multiple executives. KnowBe4, a cybersecurity leader, was duped by deepfakes during hiring interviews, allowing a North Korean attacker to be onboarded to the organization. CEO of ...
From Misuse to Abuse: AI Risks and Attacks

From Misuse to Abuse: AI Risks and Attacks

Oct 16, 2024 Artificial Intelligence / Cybercrime
AI from the attacker's perspective: See how cybercriminals are leveraging AI and exploiting its vulnerabilities to compromise systems, users, and even other AI applications Cybercriminals and AI: The Reality vs. Hype "AI will not replace humans in the near future. But humans who know how to use AI are going to replace those humans who don't know how to use AI," says Etay Maor, Chief Security Strategist at Cato Networks and founding member of Cato CTRL . "Similarly, attackers are also turning to AI to augment their own capabilities." Yet, there is a lot more hype than reality around AI's role in cybercrime. Headlines often sensationalize AI threats, with terms like "Chaos-GPT" and "Black Hat AI Tools," even claiming they seek to destroy humanity. However, these articles are more fear-inducing than descriptive of serious threats. For instance, when explored in underground forums, several of these so-called "AI cyber tools" were found to be nothing...
Next-Generation Attacks, Same Targets - How to Protect Your Users' Identities

Next-Generation Attacks, Same Targets - How to Protect Your Users' Identities

Sep 02, 2024 Cybercrime / CISO Insights
The FBI and CISA Issue Joint Advisory on New Threats and How to Stop Ransomware Note: on August 29, the FBI and CISA issued a joint advisory as part of their ongoing #StopRansomware effort to help organizations protect against ransomware. The latest advisory, AA24-242A , describes a new cybercriminal group and its attack methods. It also details three important actions to take today to mitigate cyber threats from ransomware – Installing updates as soon as they are released, requiring phishing-resistant MFA (i.e. non-SMS text-based), and training users. The growth in the number of victims of ransomware attacks and data breaches has become so profound that the new cyber defense challenge is just keeping up with the number of new attacks and disclosures from victims. This is the product of stunning advancements in cybercriminal attack methods combined with a too-slow response by many organizations in adjusting to new attack methods. As predicted, Generative AI has indeed been a game ch...
New Threat Actor 'Void Arachne' Targets Chinese Users with Malicious VPN Installers

New Threat Actor 'Void Arachne' Targets Chinese Users with Malicious VPN Installers

Jun 19, 2024 Malware / Cyber Attack
Chinese-speaking users are the target of a never-before-seen threat activity cluster codenamed Void Arachne that employs malicious Windows Installer (MSI) files for virtual private networks (VPNs) to deliver a command-and-control (C&C) framework called Winos 4.0. "The campaign also promotes compromised MSI files embedded with nudifiers and deepfake pornography-generating software, as well as AI voice and facial technologies," Trend Micro researchers Peter Girnus, Aliakbar Zahravi, and Ahmed Mohamed Ibrahim said in a technical report published today. "The campaign uses [Search Engine Optimization] poisoning tactics and social media and messaging platforms to distribute malware." The security vendor, which discovered the new threat actor group in early April 2024, said the attacks entail advertising popular software such as Google Chrome, LetsVPN, QuickVPN, and a Telegram language pack for the Simplified Chinese language to distribute Winos. Alternate attack...
Chinese Hackers Using Deepfakes in Advanced Mobile Banking Malware Attacks

Chinese Hackers Using Deepfakes in Advanced Mobile Banking Malware Attacks

Feb 15, 2024 Banking Trojan / Cybercrime
A Chinese-speaking threat actor codenamed  GoldFactory  has been attributed to the development of highly sophisticated banking trojans, including a previously undocumented iOS malware called GoldPickaxe that's capable of harvesting identity documents, facial recognition data, and intercepting SMS. "The GoldPickaxe family is available for both iOS and Android platforms," Singapore-headquartered Group-IB  said  in an extensive report shared with The Hacker News. "GoldFactory is believed to be a well-organized Chinese-speaking cybercrime group with close connections to  Gigabud ." Active since at least mid-2023, GoldFactory is also responsible for another Android-based banking malware called  GoldDigger  and its enhanced variant GoldDiggerPlus as well as GoldKefu, an embedded trojan inside GoldDiggerPlus. Social engineering campaigns distributing the malware have been found to target the Asia-Pacific region, specifically Thailand and Vietnam, by masqu...
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