AI Used For Social Engineering. Fraudsters Mimic CEO’s Voice in Unusual Cybercrime Case | WSJ

Catherine Stupp at the Wall Street Journal reported on something we have predicted would happen in this blog. The article started out with:

"Criminals used artificial intelligence-based software to impersonate a chief executive’s voice and demand a fraudulent transfer of €220,000 ($243,000) in March in what cybercrime experts described as an unusual case of artificial intelligence being used in hacking.

"The CEO of a U.K.-based energy firm thought he was speaking on the phone with his boss, the chief executive of the firm’s German parent company, who asked him to send the funds to a Hungarian supplier. The caller said the request was urgent, directing the executive to pay within an hour, according to the company’s insurance firm, Euler Hermes Group SA. Euler Hermes declined to name the victim companies.

Law enforcement authorities and AI experts have predicted that criminals would use AI to automate cyberattacks. Whoever was behind this incident appears to have used AI-based software to successfully mimic the German executive’s voice by phone. The U.K. CEO recognized his boss’ slight German accent and the melody of his voice on the phone, said Rüdiger Kirsch, a fraud expert at Euler Hermes, a subsidiary of Munich-based financial services company Allianz SE."

This is essentially the next step up in the escalation of using social engineering in a case of CEO Fraud. You need to step your employees through new-school security awareness training to prevent human errors like this.

Let's stay safe out there.