This Week in Cybersecurity: How AI Supercharged Hackers, Scammers, and Even Worms

Source Domain: www.pcmag.com

Another week in information security means another week where AI is in the headlines, either because someone’s used it to bypass a platform’s security, or because hackers are using AI to supercharge their attacks and target more people. In the first case, we reported that hackers used Meta’s AI chatbot to gain access to high-profile Instagram accounts. In the second, we covered how hackers only need 10 seconds of your child’s voice to create deepfake audio and trick terrified parents into giving them money.

Over on Instagram, where Meta AI has entirely replaced the search bar in the app, hackers simply asked it to add their own email address to the list of authorized emails for Instagram accounts belonging to Barack Obama’s White House, Sephora, and even the chief master sergeant for the US Space Force. The chatbot happily complied, sent a login confirmation code to the hacker’s address, and just like that, they had control.

Meta claims they’ve addressed the issue, but didn’t go into detail about what it was or how it happened in the first place. I do find it a bit ironic that such a significant security issue was right under Meta’s nose, right while the company decided to shut down end-to-end encryption on direct messages last month, another useful security feature, because not enough people used it, according to the company. Last year, Meta had to block teen accounts from using its AI chatbot entirely because the company was caught allowing minors to have sexual conversations with it.

One thing AI is great for, aside from helping hackers, is tricking people into giving them money. That’s where the kidnapping scam mentioned above comes into play. All someone needs is about 10 seconds of a person’s voice to make a convincing deepfake, and scammers are using children’s voices to create frantic, panicked messages claiming the child has been kidnapped, begging their parent to pay the kidnapper, predictably in…

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