Deepfakes, AI-Manipulated Audio, and Hijacked Social Media Surge in 2024
TEMPE, Ariz. and PRAGUE, May 14, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Avast, a leader in digital security and privacy and brand of Gen™ (NASDAQ: GEN), has reported that social engineering threats – those which rely on human manipulation – account for most cyberthreats faced by individuals in 2024. According to the latest quarterly Avast Threat Report, which looks at the threat landscape from January-March 2024, scams, phishing and malvertising accounted for 90% of all threats on mobile devices and 87% of threats on desktop. Moreover, the threat research team discovered a significant spike in scams leveraging sophisticated tactics such as using deepfake technology, AI-manipulated audio synchronization, and hijacking of YouTube and other social channels to disseminate fraudulent content.
- While all social media is a natural breeding ground for scams, YouTube has become a significant channel for crime.
- According to telemetry from Avast, 4 million unique users were protected against threats on YouTube in 2023, and approximately 500,000 were protected in January-March 2024.
- One of the most widespread techniques involves exploiting famous individuals and significant media events to attract large audiences.
- This further emphasizes that such strains – and their creators – never miss an opportunity to leverage social engineering to distribute malware.