Pig Butchering Scams Are Going High Tech
As digital scamming explodes in Southeast Asia, including so called “pig butchering” investment scams, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issued a comprehensive report this week with a dire warning about the rapid growth of this criminal ecosystem. Many digital scams have traditionally relied on social engineering, or tricking victims into giving away their money willingly, rather than leaning on malware or other highly technical methods. But researchers have increasingly sounded the alarm that scammers are incorporating generative AI content and deepfakes to expand the scale and effectiveness of their operations. And the UN report offers the clearest evidence yet that these high tech tools are turning an already urgent situation into a crisis.
In addition to buying written scripts to use with potential victims or relying on templates for malicious websites, attackers have increasingly been leaning on generative AI platforms to create communication content in multiple languages and deepfake generators that can create photos or even video of nonexistent people to show victims and enhance verisimilitude. Scammers have also been expanding their use of tools that can drain a victim’s cryptocurrency wallets, have been manipulating transaction records to trick targets into sending cryptocurrency to the wrong places, and are compromising smart contracts to steal cryptocurrency. And in some cases, they’ve been purchasing Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet systems to help power their efforts.
