The United Nations recently released a 142-page report covering how organised crime in South East Asia has expanded its foothold into cybercrime and is ramping up its capabilities to leverage AI.
“Cyber enabled fraud has continued to intensify, resulting in estimated financial losses between US $18 billion and $37 billion from scams targeting victims in East and Southeast Asia in 2023.”
The key takeaways for our audience:
- New models of crime are emerging, utilising AI and deepfakes to more convincingly defraud victims through phishing, social media and pig-butchering type scams.
- Stolen Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is being openly traded for further fraud to be committed while infostealing malware is so accessible now it is being rented out to cybercriminals like a subscription service.
- While cybercrime feels like a remote and/or financial-only threat, there are real physical impacts as humans are being trafficked for forced criminality.
Pages 38-43 cover some examples of these criminal tactics including: Pig-Butchering; Investment scams; Asset recovery scams; Job scams; Law enforcement impersonation; Virtual kidnapping; Sextortion; Loan scams; Parcel delivery scams; Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams
There is a lot to take in from this report as the threats are escalating – a timely reminder for professionals working from home to increase their vigilance and reduce their vulnerability to attack.
