The new age of digital threats and technological advancements has reshaped the security landscape. Social engineering and phishing are one of the leading causes of security breaches and companies must evolve their security measures to protect against them. ChatGPT is a revolutionary conversational AI, leveraged to communicate as realistically as possible. This technology can be used to build impressive and persuasive communications that can fool targets, leading to them granting malicious actors access to their private data. Modern-day SDRs or sales development reps utilize phishing tactics to perform their job. Their tasks generally involve generating leads, engaging and interacting with targets, and delivering ‘payloads’ such as a calendar invite, a PDF spec sheet, or a link to the product download.
ChatGPT is specifically designed to take advantage of linguistic data and carry out convincing conversations. It can very effectively assist with creating blogs, term papers, and even poetry. Despite its development stage, this technology proves viable due to its efficiency. Nevertheless, its security implications are highly alarming and could lead to serious malpractices unless carefully administered.
The potential of such AI-based tools is alarming. Imagine a malicious actor is able to create a profile for a company recruiter and communicate with someone via LinkedIn, making them believe the message is from someone they can trust and convincing them to provide further personal details. Then, sending links or other payloads to the employee’s personal email, it is believed that a trick such as this can be automated using ChatGPT and only basic coding skills.
To shore up any corporate networks vulnerable to ChatGPT-aided phishing attacks, it is best to employ SSE or Security Service Edge. This is traditionally done with email filters, but it is crucial to also protect against threats coming from other applications. In this case, a strict least privilege access model integrated with endpoint security products should help to defend against such attacks and simultaneously, limit any damage.
AI-based security solutions available today provide threat detection and response using the latest advances in AI technologies. The continual development of sophisticated AI-based tools from both malicious and security vendors compels us to always stay one step ahead and ensure our digital security.
