Phishing
Phishing is a digital trick where someone sends a fake message pretending to be a trusted person or company to steal your information or access your computer. It is like a digital scam artist sending out mass letters, but sometimes they do their homework to target a specific person, which is called spearphishing. Today, scammers use AI to create realistic fake voices, photos, or chat messages to make these tricks much harder to spot.
Phishing is a form of electronically delivered social engineering used by adversaries to gain unauthorized access to systems. It ranges from broad, non-targeted malware spam to spearphishing, which focuses on specific individuals or organizations. Generative AI and deepfake technologies are now being leveraged to automate and scale these campaigns, allowing for more convincing impersonation and interactive, LLM-driven social engineering attempts.
Phishing is a category of social engineering delivered via electronic communication channels, designed to facilitate unauthorized system access or data exfiltration. It encompasses both opportunistic, non-targeted campaigns and spearphishing, which involves reconnaissance-driven targeting of specific entities. In the context of AI security, generative models—including LLMs for synthetic text generation and deepfake engines for audio/visual synthesis—are utilized to enhance the efficacy of impersonation and social engineering, enabling high-fidelity, scalable, and interactive phishing vectors.