AI is already providing a powerful boost to organized crimes, according to a new report from Europol. The AI-powered developments reduce barriers to entry, make large-scale crimes such as scams cheaper to operate, and allow the criminals to expand to markets in which they do not have language or cultural familiarity.
Europol warns of AI-powered crime boom
AI-powered tools have already been spotted aiding in certain types of internet-based crime, such as improving spam or phishing messages written in foreign languages. But Europol warns that the barrier of entry for more sophisticated organized crimes is being reduced, with criminals deploying the tools to impersonate individuals for blackmail and fraud scenarios. The agency also reports a problem with generative AI tools being used to produce child exploitation material, despite safeguards to prevent that possibility being common.
The “day-to-day” of organized crimes is also increasingly being moved online and optimized with AI-powered tools: things like communication, payments to partners, and recruitment of new operatives.
In all aspects of operations, the perpetrators of organized crimes are seeking to eventually automate as much of the process as possible. There has been significant progress toward AI-powered tools handling every aspect of a scam from start to finish, from generating materials to receiving and distributing payments. Not only does that allow an unprecedented level of scaling of these operations, it also makes criminals harder to identify and track.
Europol says that particular sectors of crime are reaping large benefits from the deployment of AI-powered tools. The “market leaders” in this area include cyber attacks, international human trafficking, drug and firearm smuggling, and surprisingly waste management crimes.
It is also being put to use in state-sponsored destabilization campaigns, with Europol citing Russian meddling in foreign elections as an example. It also notes reports out of Poland that groups tied to Russian and Belarusian intelligence services have been attacking an assortment of government agencies and private organizations in the country, seeking information that can be used for blackmail. Polish Interior Ministry Undersecretary of State Maciej Duszczyk stated that an AI-powered attack on a hospital by these entities forced it to stop some of its activities for several hours.
Innovation in organized crimes projected to continue with new technology
Europol additionally warns that AI-powered fraud tools are far from the end of the line in terms of technology-boosted organized crimes. Future developments are expected to prompt similar spikes: VR projects like the “Metaverse,” quantum computing, 6G, and Neuralink-style biological interfaces are just a few of the big ones. AI will intersect with all of these developments, potentially running all or nearly all of criminal operations autonomously.
Though it is not AI-powered, the recent Europol takedown of the MATRIX network illustrates how players of all sizes in the organized crimes landscape are embracing technology for the advantages it provides them. MATRIX was an invite-only encrypted messaging service used by criminals to arrange transactions and coordinate operations as well as surf the internet in total anonymity. It was in operation for at least several years, with European law enforcement coming across it when it was found on the phone of the person convicted of murdering Dutch journalist Peter R. de Vries. MATRIX was built on about 40 servers, with many scattered across Europe. Criminals have been showing a decided preference for these major centralized networks, only abandoning them when law enforcement operations knock them apart.
Europol has also recently broken up major rings of child abuse material distributors that were using AI-powered systems to synthesize images. A February campaign broke up a ring composed of about two dozen people in one of the first large-scale organized crimes of this type that involved images made with AI. While national laws across Europe do not always clearly address wholly synthetic images of this type, the flood of these AI-created materials has made it more difficult to identify and investigate actual cases of child abuse.
The European Commission has expressed a desire to improve funding and resources dedicated to pursuing organized crimes that involve technology of this sort, including plans to double Europol’s staff within the next few years. Lawrence Pingree, VP, Dispersive, notes that this ramp-up in funding is extremely likely to be necessary to keep up with an explosion in AI-powered crime and innovative approaches that make use of other emerging technologies: “The scariest part is that AI leads to eventually anyone being able to ask it to author new exploits or carry out scalable attacks like this one. This is just the beginning, AI will grow in its depth and ability to cleanly execute multi-stage attacks, and when it reaches reliability in smaller dark models, that will be the time when this gets quite scary. Couple these types of attacks with Deepfake technology, and you create a very scary multi-domain socially aware, social engineering malware.”
Willy Leichter, CMO at AppSOC, adds that AI itself will likely have to be one of the major forces keeping AI crime in check: “The easy availability of powerful AI tools is a game-changer for organized crime. We’re all experiencing how AI can dramatically accelerate research, coding, writing, and customizing content at scale. Applying these tools to online fraud exponentially expands the reach, personalization, and credibility of phishing attacks and other scams. For legitimate uses, AI needs to be monitored for quality and accuracy, but criminals don’t need perfection to break through security filters and fool even skeptical end-users. It’s imperative that we keep up, applying equally powerful AI tools for defensive purposes. This is not an arms race that we can afford to fall behind.”
