{"id":2065,"date":"2025-02-24T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T07:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/?p=2065"},"modified":"2025-02-24T07:30:00","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T07:30:00","slug":"ai-can-kill-banks-cybersecuritys-disinformation-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/?p=2065","title":{"rendered":"AI can kill banks: Cybersecurity\u2019s disinformation gap"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div class=\"grid grid--cols-10@md grid--cols-8@lg article-column\">\n<div class=\"col-12 col-10@md col-6@lg col-start-3@lg\">\n<div class=\"article-column__content\">\n<div class=\"container\"><\/div>\n<p>The British research organization Say No To Disinfo has simulated an AI-driven disinformation campaign in cooperation with communications specialists Fenimore Harper. As part of the campaign, 500 bank customers in the UK were confronted with synthetic \u201crumours\u201d about their financial institution.<\/p>\n<p>The motivation behind the simulation was to ascertain whether fake news campaigns based on generative AI could trigger \u201cbank runs\u201d in the future \u2014 such as occurred against the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Bank\">Silicon Valley Bank\u00a0<\/a>in the US. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.saynotodisinfo.com\/_files\/ugd\/438ee6_d9f4506bfd2e43218b96f716bae91ce1.pdf\">results of the study<\/a>\u00a0underline AI\u2019s ominous potential in this area:<\/p>\n<p>Almost 61% of study participants who consumed the fake news were fundamentally willing to withdraw their money from the respective bank.<\/p>\n<p>Just over 33% of respondents rated this as \u201cvery likely,\u201d and another 27% as \u201cprobable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Translated into financial expenditure, according to the study, a \u00a310 investment in AI content generation (around US$13) can be enough to \u201cshift\u201d assets worth \u00a31 million.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith the help of AI tools, we generated false headlines whose narratives were intended to play on existing fears and biases. The key message was: \u2018Customer funds are not safe,\u2019\u201d explain the study authors.<\/p>\n<p>According to their report, the experts primarily used the\u00a0short message service X to spread masses of corresponding posts and memes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGiven how quickly, easily, and inexpensively effective disinformation campaigns can be set up, the financial sector must be prepared,\u201d the researchers warn. Unfortunately, however, banks often lack the appropriate specialists: \u201cTrust mapping for customers, rogue actor mapping, or war gaming are things that financial institutions deal with reactively rather than proactively.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It is mission-critical for financial institutions to address the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.csoonline.com\/article\/3560497\/governments-fear-election-interference-but-its-an-enterprise-cybersecurity-problem-too.html\">risks posed by such AI-based campaigns<\/a>: \u201cBanks which focus on cyber threats and neglect the risks posed by influence operations\u201d are creating a critical security gap, the study authors state.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The British research organization Say No To Disinfo has simulated an AI-driven disinformation campaign in cooperation with communications specialists Fenimore Harper. As part of the campaign, 500 bank customers in the UK were confronted with synthetic \u201crumours\u201d about their financial institution. The motivation behind the simulation was to ascertain whether fake news campaigns based on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}