With AI-generated content on the rise in 2024, we'll have to be extremely vigilant in regard to scams. — AFP Relaxnews/Photography solarseven/Getty Images
Major name in antivirus solutions McAfee is warning consumers about the major trends in cybercrime on the horizon for 2024. Between deepfakes and Olympic-related scams, we'll all need to keep our eyes peeled – and our wits about us.
Deepfakes and elections
2024 will see Europeans vote to elect their members of parliament and Americans head to the polls to choose their next president. These events could be impacted by the spread of fake news, as well as a proliferation of deepfakes – video montages that use artificial intelligence to generate realistic-looking images and audio that seem to come from celebrities. Voters will therefore need to be particularly vigilant in the face of content that attempts to discredit certain politicians, and the media will need to be ultra vigilant with their sources to avoid being fooled. In a short period of time, AI has made huge advances and can now be used to create audio and photo-based scams from scratch.
Deepfakes and business
In the same vein, beware of fake images created by AI that is used to endorse scams or dubious marketplaces and online stores. These creations could multiply across social networks, deceiving many internet users, especially younger ones, by using images of celebrities, for example, without their knowledge.
Cyberbullying among young users
With deepfake-generating apps largely now available to the general public, this type of content is also at risk of becoming a tool of harassment, particularly for teenagers. More than ever, therefore, young people should avoid sharing photos or videos of themselves, even with close friends. Because these images could be manipulated and one day used against them.
Charity fraud
Charity fraud is an underhanded way of getting money out of internet users by asking them to donate to worthy causes or well-known associations. Cybercriminals often send phishing campaigns with fake charity sites in their messages to trick would-be donors. This type of scam is set to continue growing in 2024.
The Olympics and con artists
With the Olympics in the news, hackers will be taking advantage of the event to create traps for their future victims. Unsurprisingly, the event is likely to become a fertile ground for scams, with fake ads for buying tickets to events or booking hotel nights at 'bargain' prices, all with links to malware pages where the personal (and banking) information of the victims will be collected.
Be careful with QR codes
The quishing phenomenon, which took hold this past year, is set to grow in 2024, once again "thanks" to AI. The idea is for hackers to generate QR codes, again linking to pages of malware. The reason they're adopting this new technique is that a QR code is much harder to decipher than a complex, suspicious internet address. If the user scans the malicious QR code, either in the street or on a website, they're often redirected to a page where personal data can be collected. – AFP Relaxnews
