ChatGPT is the main topic right now, even upsetting teachers and academics, but with this simple method of writing term papers comes another weapon in the hacker’s arsenal. Known Be4 CEO, Stu Sjouwerman, discusses how cybercriminals are using AI to create phishing emails and how organizations can protect themselves from AI-generated scams.
As AI advances, security researchers continue to raise concerns about how cybercriminals can use AI to further their nefarious activities. ChatGPT, an AI chatbot based on large language models (LLMs) that has a million users, is a recent example. Because of its ability to answer complex questions, write essays and social media posts, and even generate or debug code, it opens a new window every week. This publicly available AI is now being used by threat actors to create highly sophisticated and targeted spear-phishing attacks.
But what is happening with ChatGPT, and why is it pissing everyone off?
ChatGPT is more witty than functional
Since November 2022, when Open AI released its blockbuster bot, ChatGPT, it has been blowing people’s minds with its responses, resulting in a flood of demand.
This tool has sparked ongoing rumors and complaints from its users. However, Open AI has admitted as much, explaining on its website that “ChatGPT occasionally writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.”
The viral phenomenon has been preventing people from creating new accounts and using the service in the last weeks. Even existing users receive “at capacity” warnings, which prevent them from loading their history or participating in the chat.
Visitors are mostly seeing the message “ChatGPT is currently at capacity.” It indicates that the chat.openai.com site has reached its capacity for users per session and/or query load. According to experts, Open AI is limiting the use of its servers due to the high cost of running them.
ChatGPT has been amusingly dispensing creative messages in limerick rhymes, rap, and even pirate-speak instead of canned messages.
Let’s remember that this tool is still in development. The company recently announced the release of a premium version, for which you can now sign up for a waitlist. This is a way for Open AI to monetize the chatbot and give paid subscribers priority access.
Nevertheless, in the midst of all the ChatGPT furor, within its user group, there are not only professionals and companies, but also opportunistic hackers who are using or replicating this tool. In this way, they have created a new form of scam with this AI.
AI scams via ChatGPT
One aspect of being especially wary of will be get-rich-quick schemes that promise that if you use generative AI for your work or hobby, you will become astonishingly wealthy. Some con artists have already advertised that they will reveal the hidden secrets of generative AI so that you can commission it to write the next Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that will skyrocket to become a top-notch money-making bestseller (promising money and fame, an exciting twofer).
All you have to do is come up with the most perfect prompts. If you can write just the right sentence or two as a prompt, and then feed the juicy prompt into an AI app like ChatGPT, you’ll have an entire novel that will receive global acclaim.
The key is to understand what the prompt should include. As a result, for ten dollars or even a thousand dollars, these con artists will teach you everything you need to know to write the best-selling prompt.
The “I’ll show you how to do it” scam of the century comes hand-in-hand with all the ChatGPT euphoria. The opportunists and new self-proclaimed AI gurus have managed to build a whole business out of the tool’s million-plus subscribers.
We’ve got two major scam-seeking avenues open now:
1) Taking advantage of the current craze for generative AI, such as ChatGPT, to dupe people into using AI apps for nonsense get-rich-quick schemes.
2) Scammers themselves have decided to sue generative AI such as ChatGPT to create scams for their get-rich-quick schemes.
But beyond the scammers, we find the hackers, those who do not seek to teach you. Instead, they use ChatGPT to create more refined and convincing prompts to get you to click or persuade you to sign up to get you to provide them with all your personal data.
From their point of view, they think that why to settle for a few dollars if they could steal your money and even your identity easily and quickly.
Are you realizing the threats that come with this?
The generative AI dark side: Malware via ChatGPT
There are more obscure things to do with ChatGPT than just a simple scam or hacking a person. It has to do with the use of generative AI to create malware.
We all have heard about malware at least once. This is the kind of software that can wreak havoc on your laptop or desktop computer. Malware can also wreak havoc on your smartphone. You may also be familiar with these through references to computer viruses, such as the constant nagging to keep your computer virus detection software up to date.
Anyone with no knowledge of computers can find tons of malware on the Internet. You don’t have to be a techie at all. Simply look around until you find some malware that meets your requirements, and you’re almost ready to go. The problem is that if it is posted on the Internet, there is a good chance that anti-malware systems will detect and block it.
But let’s suppose you’re a cyber crook, and you need fresh new malware, not one that is already circulating on the internet.
You can hire people to write malware for you, but this can be risky because they might rat on you, include a backdoor, or steal whatever you’re stealing with the malware. Then what to do?
What if you could have an AI to write a completely new and highly effective malware for you? Imagine all the possibilities!
You use a generative AI app like ChatGPT to generate malware for you. Problem solved!
Some cybersecurity researchers attempted to use ChatGPT for this evil purpose. The idea was to show that it was possible. If they can do it, cybercriminals are likely to be able to, if not already doing so.
Conclusion
There are lots of ways to use AI for rotten purposes. Cyber delinquents are gleefully eyeing a plethora of heinous scams that can be carried out, or at the very least, aided and abetted by the use of generative AI.
We are not only talking about lazy students using AI to cheat on their homework or professionals taking credit for ingenious work. After all, the possibility to make profits out of technology tools is too attractive to be ignored.
Although AI ethics ad laws are bending their limits, this is probably the smallest of our problems. We are far from seeing a massive negative response from the public to the AIs. But probably the unfortunate part is OpenAI, responsible for ChatGPT, knows this is only the spark that will ignite a whole ecosystem of issues at all different levels.
With the rise of ChatGPT and numerous AI tools to answer questions or generate content, cyber thieves have upped their game and built a whole new operating system to violate your cybersecurity. Scams, hacking, and even new sophisticated malware.
Expect more AI For Bad efforts, which will become more sophisticated and widespread as AI for this purpose becomes easier to use and more widely available. The tidal wave is just getting started.
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