Image recovery, voice samples, of the telephone number : with these three elements, an in-house ESET hacker tested and succeeded in a presidential scam on a company director, thanks to artificial intelligence. Benoit Grunemwald, cybersecurity expert at ESET France, testifies.
For hackers, the senior executives of a company are not easier prey than others ; on the other hand, they have much more interest, writes the Journal du Net (JDN). According to a newspaper infographic, executives reportedly have an average click-through rate of 60% on fraudulent emails, and the results of these cyberattacks can range from theft of sensitive financial data to theft of intellectual property. Benoit Grunemwald describes the test carried out by ESET : “For a cyberhacker whose objective is the lure of gain, several methods to achieve your goals are available. One of them is the deployment of “ransomware” in the network of its victim and the other is the scam against the president. In this second case, it is not even necessary to penetrate the victim’s information system. We wanted to test this technique with today’s tools. Our ethical and in-house hacker, Jake Moore, obtained the agreement of his friend, referred to here as “Frédéric”, to the project, without however disclosing the full scope thereof. Frédéric is the director of a renowned real estate agency, specialized in the marketing of high-end residences located on the British coast. In my forties, he is accustomed to presenting luxurious villas through videos which he accompanies with his own comments. Therefore, there was no difficulty in obtaining samples of his voice to generate a duplicate by artificial intelligence. Following another manipulation, Jake got control of Frédéric's phone number. With these two elements, Jake asked Frédéric’s associate via a voice note to make a transfer to his bank account. This technique was effective, because the funds have been transferred. To protect against these attacks, the human factor is decisive. Organizations must establish rules and ensure compliance with them. »
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