A new Europol Report on the AI-based Large Language Model (LLM) ChatGPT provides an overview of use cases for cybercrime activities. ChatGPT is already used to facilitate cybercrime activities, including producing texts for phishing campaigns or investment opportunities. The Europol report states that the efficiency of cybercrime organizations could be massively increased with the help of ChatGPT and, thus, the number of their victims.
Impersonating, Social Engineering, And Pishing
According to the Europol report, ChatGPT’s ability to draft highly authentic texts makes it an extremely useful tool for phishing. Where many basic phishing scams were previously more easily detectable due to obvious grammatical and spelling mistakes, it is now possible to impersonate an organization or individual in a highly realistic manner, even with only a basic grasp of the English language.
ChatGPT may therefore offer criminals new opportunities, especially for crimes involving social engineering, given its abilities to respond to messages in context and adopt a specific writing style.
ChatGPT may offer criminals new opportunities, especially for crimes involving social engineering, given its ability to respond to messages in context and adopt a specific writing style. Additionally, various types of online fraud can be given added legitimacy by using ChatGPT to generate fake social media engagement, for instance, to promote a fraudulent investment offer.
These types of deceptive communications have been something criminals would have to produce on their own.
Cybercrime Coding
In addition to generating human-like language, ChatGPT can produce code in several different programming languages. As with the other use cases, it is possible to generate a range of practical outputs in a matter of minutes by entering the right prompts. One of the crime areas for which this could have a significant impact is cybercrime. With the current version of ChatGPT, it is already possible to create basic
tools for a variety of malicious purposes.
Dark LLM’s
The next generations of LLMs will have access to more data, be able to understand and solve more complex problems, and potentially integrate with a vast range of other applications. At the same time, it will be crucial to monitor potential other branches of this development, as dark LLMs trained to facilitate harmful output may become a key criminal business model of the future. This poses a new challenge for law enforcement, whereby it will become easier than ever for malicious actors to perpetrate criminal activities with no necessary prior knowledge.
Given the rapid pace of this technology, it remains critical that subject matter experts take this research further and dive deeper if they are to grasp its full potential.
