Scammers scammers, that’s the idea behind Apate. This artificial intelligence, named after the goddess of deception, was designed by a cybersecurity expert. She has to keep criminal groups busy looking to extort money through phone scams. Approximately $55 billion is stolen each year in this way.
It was Dali Kaafar, executive director of Macquarie University’s cybersecurity center (based in Sydney, Australia), who came up with the idea for making Apate after receiving a fraudulent call, reports the establishment’s website, discovered by PC Mag. In the middle of lunch, he picks up and quickly realizes his interlocutor’s intentions. Cybersecurity expert expands sharing.
Possible fictitious victims
Assuming that scammers need to call large numbers of people to find a victim, the Australian professor envisioned Apate to extend the duration of exchanges as much as possible.
Macquarie University’s cybersecurity center has programmed a system based on artificial intelligence, combining a text generator and speech synthesis software. During their scams, criminals are tricked into thinking they are talking to potential victims.
According to the university, Apate is now in the testing phase. Capable of mimicking many languages and accents, the robots can be used anywhere in the world. For scammers to call the software, numbers have been spread on the web, so they can be added to the databases used by criminal groups.
Five minutes of retention on average
Today, the Apate solution language models can communicate for an average of five minutes. Still far from the long-awaited 40 minutes. But to take the next step, Dali Kaafar believes a partnership with telecom players is essential.
According to him, most of the calls now blocked because they are categorized as spam and scams should be redirected to Apate. Evil activities would no longer be profitable enough to be viable.
Until criminals also opt for automated AI systems. “If the scammers’ chatbots end up talking to the anti-scammers’ chatbots instead of stealing money from real people, I would consider it a big win,” concludes the cybersecurity expert.
Source: BFM TV
