Everyone seems to be talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT. This technology – along with other generative AI models – present us with a wide range of potential benefits and some very serious potential concerns. In this blog, we look at how AI can be used by cybercriminals to steal from your dealership, destroy your dealership’s reputation, and shut down your ability to sell and service cars and trucks.
Highly Convincing Phishing Campaigns
Generative AI models like ChatGPT make it possible for anyone to automate the creation of highly convincing phishing emails, social engineering attacks, and other types of malicious content. AI generated malicious content will avoid having typical characteristics that are signs of a phishing campaign like poor grammar, spelling issues, and general anomalies. Therefore, detecting AI generated phishing emails will be more difficult.
No Coding Skills Needed
Generative AI doesn’t just create convincing, malicious content – it can also generate code. This code can be used to exploit unpatched software used by your dealership or to hold your dealership’s data for ransom. Generative AI lowers the barriers for entry into the cybercrime game by enabling those with no coding skills to create malicious code. As a result, the pool of cybercriminals – and the number of attacks perpetrated by them – will grow.
Nefarious Audio Deepfakes
Microsoft has an AI voice generator called VALL-E (Voice Artificial Lifeform with Learnt Embeddings) that can simulate the voice of anyone based on a 3-second audio sample. This technology can create synthetic voices that can mimic real people. It’s supposedly flawless. It matches voice pitch, tone, cadence, and mannerisms perfectly. There are lots of valuable ways that this technology can be used. But unfortunately, this can also be used by the cybercriminal. For instance, it can be used to impersonate your dealership’s owner or CFO and then direct someone at your dealership to share credentials or transfer funds.
Audio deepfakes isn’t a farfetched idea that might one day come to be. It’s happening now. In fact, the FTC recently issued an alert about the use of an AI voice generator to impersonate a loved one in distress. The scammer then uses the voice generator to request money. This is happening today.
Bottom Line – Be Prepared
The job of your cybersecurity team isn’t just to prevent an attack. It’s also to respond to an attack regardless of where that attack comes from, when it occurs, or how it’s executed.
The reality is that eventually the cybercriminal will get into your network – regardless of the cyber defenses you have in place. The key to mitigating – or even eliminating – the impact to your dealership is to have a team of well-trained technical IT and cybersecurity resources always ready to take swift action when the inevitable occurs. This is what’s needed to ensure that you can securely sell and service cars and trucks without interruption.
