How Hackers Can Up Their Game by Using ChatGPT

Consumers, beware: AI chatbots like ChatGPT are likely to drive an increase in the use and effectiveness of online fraud tools such as phishing and spear-phishing messages.

In fact, it could already be happening. Phishing attacks around the world grew almost 50% in 2022 from a year earlier, according to Zscaler, a cloud-security provider. And, some experts say, artificial-intelligence software that makes phishing messages sound more believable are part of the problem. AI reduces or eliminates language barriers and grammatical mistakes, helping scammers impersonate a target’s colleagues, friends or relatives.

“This new era is going to be worse than what we had before,” says Meredith Broussard, research director at the New York University Alliance for Public Interest Technology. “And what we had before was really, really bad.”

High stakes

AI chatbots have exploded in popularity, with perhaps the best-known being ChatGPT, developed by the AI-research company OpenAI, a strategic partner of Microsoft. But dozens of chatbots, using what are referred to as large language models, are becoming more widely available and can closely mimic human communication based on data they amass. These models can be used for many purposes, such as helping office workers create routine memos more quickly. But they can also be used by criminals—to defraud victims, for instance, or to spread malicious viruses.

Telltale signs of a phishing attack have long included mistakes in grammar or spelling. But AI can give a phishing attack more credibility—and reach—not just because of its ability to generate fluent, grammatical messages in many languages, but also because of its ability to mimic the speaking or writing styles of individuals.

“The whole point with large language models is their ability to emulate what humans sound like,” says Etay Maor, senior director of security strategy at Cato Networks, a cloud networking and security provider.

Thus, given the opportunity to learn the style in which a certain person writes emails and texts, Maor says, an AI program can be used to mimic communications from a company executive.

“It’s all about trust, and if I can make you think I’m one of you, you’re going to begin to do things with more trust and less skepticism,” says Roger Grimes, a computer-security professional with KnowBe4, a security-awareness training and simulated-phishing platform.

Using AI, Grimes says, criminals can quickly determine industry-specific terms that give them more ability to target companies such as hospitals, banks and fintech.

Targeted campaigns

AI’s usefulness in phishing and spear-phishing attacks doesn’t stop with its ability to mimic authentic human communication. The analytic skills of machine learning can also be useful in determining who best to target in an organization and how exactly to attack them.

Sean McNee, vice president of research and data at DomainTools, an internet intelligence company, offers a hypothetical example. Say an accountant at a company innocently posts on social media about his frustrations with a recent audit. AI could determine the accountant’s peers, his company’s reporting structure and who else at the company might be most susceptible to an attack. The attacker then could create a spear-phishing email purporting to be from the chief financial officer referring to a discrepancy in the audit and asking the recipient to open an attached spreadsheet that contains a virus.

Ramayya Krishnan, dean of Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, recommends being proactive to protect against such attacks.

First, before acting on something, he says, people should always verify the legitimacy of the request through independent means. This means before clicking on a link or sending money, the recipient should call the individual through a familiar phone number or walk into the person’s office to confirm the request, Krishnan says.

Maintain a healthy dose of skepticism for everything you receive, Maor says. Ask yourself, why is my bank emailing me? Why is there a sense of urgency? Why is there an attachment to click on? It’s also advisable to hover over a link before clicking to see if it leads to an expected URL. “If you have some reason to think something is amiss, don’t click on it,” Maor says.

Other guardrails

Strong regulation of AI could also help, says Broussard, who is also an associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University.

AI itself should also be enlisted to help identify malicious content with its origins in AI, says Dave Ahn, chief architect at Centripetal, a cybersecurity company. But first the models for doing so will have to evolve and the data will have to improve. Data on successful AI-based attacks will help cybersecurity experts train new models to identify malicious activity better, says Ahn.

Other possible security measures include giving users a way to distinguish their content as authentic. The use of hidden patterns known as “watermarks,” for instance, can be buried in AI-generated texts to help identify whether the words are written by a human or computer, Krishnan says. But the applicability of these tools is limited.

Says Krishnan, “We’re not near deploying them at scale where it’s a solution to the bad-actor potential we have today.”

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

How Hackers Can Up Their Game by Using ChatGPT

Artificial intelligence, by mimicking the writing style of individuals, can make cyberattacks much harder to detect

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.