City
Epaper

Israel sees cyber attacks by voice impersonating of senior staff

By IANS | Updated: July 10, 2019 14:15 IST

The Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) has issued a warning of a new type of cyber attack, using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to impersonate senior company executives.

Open in App

In this method, instructions are given to the companies staff members to perform transactions such as money transfers, as well as malicious activity on the company's network.

Recently, reports on cyber attacks of this kind were received at the operations centre of the INCD, Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday.

The new offensive is of the business email compromise (BEC) type frauds by email against commercial and government organizations to motivate employees using social engineering methods to act for the attacker's benefit.

The most common types are phishing messages and an invoicing fraud in which the attacker impersonates the vendor, submits an invoice to the company and tries to motivate an employee under time pressure to make a bank transfer, provide information or allow access to the company's network.

The method of attack escalates and includes the use of the AI-based software, which makes voice phishing calls to senior executives.

The main innovation is the attacking software, which learns to mimic the voice of a person defined for it and makes a conversation with an employee on behalf of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Today, there are already programs that, after listening 20 minutes to a particular voice, speak in the voice everything that the user types.

According to the INCD, for an organization that falls prey to such fraud, economic damage may be high.

In its announcement, the INCD also issued suggestions for taking precautions and raising awareness among organizations such as training employees, paying attention to deviations in organizational processes, verifying instructions and using technological means to prevent misuse of email.

( With inputs from IANS )

Open in App

Related Stories

InternationalPakistani authorities under fire as lawyers threaten indefinite boycott over law and order breakdown

CricketVengsarkar's prime, Chetan-Maninder's magic, Kapil's finest hour as Test skipper: Reminiscing on India's 1986 tour to England

EntertainmentR Kelly hospitalised after alleged drug overdose

NationalHungry thief who cooked himself a meal in Kerala hotel before fleeing with Rs 25,000 arrested

BusinessSouth Korea strengthens economic ties with US to have China-free supply chain

टेकमेनिया Realted Stories

TechnologyPanchayati Raj Ministry to join Bhashini to boost e-governance at grassroot level

TechnologyTinder Makes Dating Social with Double Date Feature for You and Your Bestie

TechnologyCentre launches Rs 3,000 FASTag annual pass for cars to ease highway drive

TechnologyCrisil suggests excluding gold from India’s core inflation index for clear domestic trends

TechnologyIndian defence entities projected to see revenue expansion of 15-17 pc in FY26: Report