Cyber Fraudsters Are Using ChatGPT For Phishing Attacks, Police Caution. Know Details

Scammers are using ChatGPT and other AI tools to entrap people in phishing attacks. The Police have cautioned about the same citing a recent case.

ChatGPT has left everyone mesmerised with its superb performance and human-like responses ever since it was launched in November. Now, cyber scammers have started using AI and its power to generate phishing emails linked with harmful code, reported Times Of India.

Not having sufficient knowledge about language proficiency and culture acted as a big setback for scammers to make their emails look realistic and believable. Due to this, they were earlier unable to cheat their targets.

However, as reported by Times Of India, in February this year, an official from Mumbai police's cyber cell reached Gujarat while tracking a phishing trail by scammers. They said the scammers "used ChatGPT to draft two business emails and five SMSes."

The same report said the Mumbai police were monitoring an email that was written from a non-existent Bhakti Enterprises from Patan, which was involved in spices.

A senior Gujarat CID crimes officer said, as quoted by Time Of India, "The Mumbai firm lost lakhs to the cyber crooks. The police interrogated some suspects and found that the cyber-criminals had used the AI tool to mimic the language and tone of authentic business emails as well as the SMSes."

Phishing attacks take place when suspicious and infected emails or message links are sent to recipients in an attempt to make them fool and install malware on the user's devices in order to hack into them.

According to the report, the CID crime branch received 938 complaints about fake emails from January 2022 to February 1 this year.

Out of all these complaints, about 90 were pertaining to business emails that impersonated senior officials, the report mentioned.

Meanwhile, scammers sent almost all these emails with offers related to cryptocurrencies and impersonating as agricultural traders or officials from petrochemical organisations.

All these were absolutely fake emails sent from non-existent addresses, which made it difficult for the victims to authenticate their veracity.

The Gujarat police have expressed concerns about the phishing gangs that are operating at a large scale and are using AI tools to write error-free emails and SMSes to trap and cheat the targets.

A senior CID officer said, "Not all hackers are fluent in English, which works against them. Most organizations look for unconventional uses of grammar and unusual wording to weed out phishing emails," as quoted by TOI.

The office further said, "But ChatGPT fixes this issue, making messages appear more genuine, and therefore far more likely to be successful as the basis of an attack."

Cyber consultant for Jaipur police Mukesh Chaudhry said such phishing attacks are widely prevalent in states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, reported Times Of India.

However, these phishing gangs using ChatGPT and other AI tools have also started functioning from north-eastern states like Tripura and Mizoram.