She gave $50K to Scammers & Sora Cybersecurity Concerns

Good Morning!

Lets get into todays cybercrime rundown..

She gave $50,000 to scammers

Charlotte Cowles, a financial columnist, got GOT. Charlotte found herself caught up in an elaborate scam that involved fake amazon employees, FTC agents, and CIA agents. These scammers pulled out all the costumes for this con.

Charlotte was contacted out of the blue by someone posing as an amazon employee, stating that her account was flagged for fraudulent activities. The fake employee then referred Charlotte to an agent from the Federal Trade Commission (an accomplice to the scam) and then of course the “CIA” had to get involved. Long story short, The scammers orchestrated Charlotte to bring the undercover CIA agent a shoe box full of $50K in cash.

You can read the entire story here @ Charlottes blog 

Variston Spyware Company

Variston, a Barcelona based startup has spent the last few years in the shadows, exactly as planned. The company was so secretive that they wouldn’t allow employees to disclose where they worked. Variston specialized in creating “zero day” exploits, meaning exploiting bugs in software the original developers are unaware about. Googles Threat Analysis Group published a blog dissecting exploits and traced them back to Variston, shining light on the company for the very first time

This was the beginning of the unwraveling of the group. After being exposed, half the employees left the Variston fearing an association to the company. Insider have stated that the company will soon shut its doors for good. Secrecy and anonymity is so important in this industry, and Variston burned both.

Cybersecurity Concerns with Open AI’s Sora

Im sure you’ve seen. There’s no way you haven’t. But if somehow you missed it… AI generated video is here. Open AI’s new text to video product “Sora” is simply amazing. Check out these AI generated videos to see what i’m talking about. Sora allows you to simply write what you want to see and watch it come to life in a 10 second hyper realistic video.

Deepfakes have been around for awhile, and we’ve seen & spoken about the potential dangers with it. Open AI’s Sora has taken the threat potential to another level. As great as the technology is, my mind immediately goes to the many scenarios where this can be exploited for scamming. Sex-stortion is already a major issue. Imagine someone now being threatened with an AI generated video of themselves. It’ll be incredibly difficult to tell what’s real and AI generated.

Open AI have already stated that they are working on solutions to prevent scenarios like that from happening. Im extremely excited for this development in technology, but am also very unnerved by the risks.

Cybercriminals are incrdibly crafty.

But that’s why we’re here, keeping you informed. So you Don't Get Got!

P.S. Your experiences matter. If you've encountered a scam or hack and have insights to share, we invite you to connect with us. Let's build a community that stands against cyber threats.