According to Zscalar, “global phishing attacks have surged nearly 60% year-over-year, with generative AI technologies like voice phishing and deepfake phishing playing a significant role in the escalation.”

“Threat actors are now exploiting generative AI and other advanced technologies to craft more deceptive attacks, often leveraging trusted platforms,” according to Deepen Desai, Chief Security Officer and Head of Security Research at Zscalar.

Two trends are evident.  First, the ability to send bulk phishing attacks is widespread in the hacking community.  From leaks that put millions of emails on the market to the ability to harvest from social media and other sites, there has never been a bigger array of potential victims.  Generative AI makes it trivial to create, tweak, and personalize enticing messages.

Second, spear-phishing is more potent every day.  Phishing is usual done via shotgun: emailing all 100,000 employees at a large company.  Spear-phishing is a targeted attack where the malicious actor may hand-craft specific messages to infiltrate executive, administrative, and other mailboxes which could lead to high-payoff results, such as deep exploitation or direct money transfer authorizations.

And generative AI makes it all easier, because now everyone speaks every language perfectly, can sound like they’re business insiders, and can carry on detailed conversations effortlessly.

Download the full report on Zscalar’s web site.

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raindog308

Dread Lord of LowEnd Content at LowEndBox

I'm raindog308, techno polymath and long-time LowEndTalk community Administrator. My technical interests include all things Unix, perl, python, golang, shell scripting, vintage operating systems such as MVS, and relational database systems such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.

I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308

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