In one of my security feeds, I saw a Wall Street Journal article about how cybercriminals are using an app on the Dark Web to effectively clone websites. WSJ articles are usually behind a paywall, so here’s the same details from Proofpoint. I would recommend reading it as it covers how these fake sites are used to deliver common attacks.
Today’s reality is that cybercriminals are increasingly using AI to develop better attacks. This is just the latest reported technique, probably because it’s starting to be used more often. Like is often the case with cybersecurity, we’re in an arms race between attackers and defenders, between the black hats and the white hats. That also applies to AI. I know some folks are leery to embrace AI. I would also point out that there were a lot of folks leery about online shopping and it’s really hard nowadays to get what you need without doing shopping online. Any new technology has its risks, some of which aren’t well-known as the technology emerges. But this is true of most technology.
The other thing I want to point out is that often, what is old is new again when it comes to technology. A cloned site is kind of a variation of something we call a watering hole attack. In a watering hole attack scenario, a legitimate site is compromised and because people go to said site, they end up getting hit, thought the site is legitimate. However, compromising an existing site is a lot harder than simply cloning the site using AI. We’ve seen plenty of cases where enough of a site’s interface has been cloned, such as back in 2011 with Kelley Blue Book. But that took some effort. With AI, the effort is now minimal. And with the proliferation of URLs, many of which people never even look at, if a threat actor can clone the site and lure a target to it, why wouldn’t the threat actor go down that road?
All of this means that if we are on the defensive side of cybersecurity, we need to look at AI in the same way as the attackers do: as a force multiplier. If you do some research, you’ll see that the “big boys” are already leveraging AI. But it’s time we do so at all levels.