Cybercriminals use intensively AI
In the Internet, criminals are hard to catch. For their crimes - Cyberattacks, love fraud, sexual exploitation of children - they use the latest technologies. This is shown in a report by the European Police Office Europol.
The number of cybercrimes has been steadily increasing in the past year. This is evident from a comprehensive analysis by the European Police Office Europol on organized crime on the Internet. The most common types of crimes were Ransomware attacks, sexual exploitation of children (CSE), and online fraud.
According to the report presented in The Hague, criminals consistently use new technologies and the increasing complexity of digital infrastructures, which provide potential attack surfaces. In 2023, millions of victims in the EU were attacked and exploited online every day.
Small and medium-sized enterprises were increasingly targeted by cyberattacks, whose structures were not adequately protected. Most digital skimming attacks hit online retailers. Adults were mainly victims of phishing, investment fraud, and love fraud. Minors, on the other hand, were the focus of attackers who sexually exploit children and extortionists.
AI as a weapon
Cybercriminals are increasingly interested in using artificial intelligence (AI), which has already become a common tool in their arsenal and is likely to find even more applications in the future. So there are increasingly sophisticated extortion methods.
Bands sell fraud templates on the Internet for fraud, sexual exploitation, or phishing emails. The scripts for dialogues with minors help, according to experts, sexual offenders to "refine their grooming techniques". Deepfakes - deceptively authentic forgeries of image and sound - are also used extensively. So voices are copied for so-called shock calls to relatives or friends to extort money or bank access data. AI is used to create videos or images of child sexual abuse.
Law enforcement agencies must respond to this, both in terms of personnel resources and technical capabilities. They must build capacities to counteract these threats.
Digital loot
According to Europol experts, the Darknet continues to serve as a catalyst for cybercrime by allowing criminals to exchange knowledge, tools, and services anonymously. The use of cryptocurrencies is observed to increase in various criminal areas. The criminals are partly based in the EU, but also act from outside the EU and hide their illegal operations and money in third countries.
Another worrying aspect of computer crime is the young age of the perpetrators, wrote Europol Director Catherine De Bolle. Since cybercriminals often seem to be minors, a stronger focus on prevention could prevent young people from embarking on a criminal career.
The European Police Office Europol has highlighted that international cybercriminals are leveraging the latest technologies, including artificial intelligence, to perpetrate various forms of cybercrime such as ransomware attacks, love fraud, and sexual exploitation of children. The increasing use of AI by cybercriminals is leading to more sophisticated extortion methods and the creation of deceptively authentic deepfake materials.
In light of this, it is essential for law enforcement agencies to enhance their personnel resources and technical capabilities to counteract these threats and build capacities to address this growing issue.
