The rise of the trend of artificial intelligence (AI) has brought up new opportunities across various industries, but it has also given dagerous cybercriminals very powerful tools to work smarter and come up with more dangerous attacks.
India’s national cyber agency, the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), has also issued a warning about this growing threat.
According to famous Sanjay Bahl, who is the Director-General of CERT-In, has claimed that AI-powered phishing attacks are increasing day by day and are also becoming increasingly difficult to detect, even when trained professionals are working on them.
Traditional phishing also involves sending fake emails or fake messages that trick people and lead them to the trap of revealing personal details such as passwords, bank information, or credit card numbers.
However, the new wave of AI-powered phishing have started using advanced technologies like the machine learning and the natural language processing, which would help them to create convincing content.
These AI systems work dangerously in this case as they can mimic professional writing styles, generate fake voices, and even build an entire fake websites that might look exactly like real wesbites.
Bahl also explained that phishing attacks in India have taken a complex form because scammers can now use AI to analyze the extracted public data and even personalize their attacks.
This form of targeted scamming, is often known as spear-phishing, which is something that makes the victims more likely to fall for such traps since the messages over these fake emails or messages appear genuine and relevant.
For example, an employee may receive an email that looks exactly like it’s received from their boss, maybe asking for urgent payments or any confidential data.
According to Sanjay Bahl’s statement, India’s cybersecurity infrastructure needs to get a update quickly so that it can address this new kind of threat. He also emphasized that it’s no longer reliable to just rely only on the various antivirus software or theme based basic spam filters.
Instead, organizations must seriously start to invest in AI-driven defense systems that can detect any kind of unusual behavior, assist to verify message sources, and even flag suspicious activity in real time.
To tackle this kind of issue, CERT-In has thus started working seriously with both the private and public organizations in order to improve cybersecurity awareness and worked to enhance the factors of resilience.
Regular training sessions, understanding phishing simulations, and increased awareness campaigns are being promoted so as to educate the employees about the same and inform citizens about how they can work on recognizing various phishing attempts.
The warning that have been issued from CERT-In would serve as a reminder that while AI acts as a tool that brings innovation, it also acts as a tool that introduces new risks. As AI-powered phishing continues to get stronger, both individuals and organizations must stay alert about the same.
