And in Hong Kong, an employee of an international company was tricked into transferring nearly €24 million to scammers using a video conference filled with AI-generated participants. It was reported by Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) and explains how the elaborate expansion of the well-known 'boss scam' works.
advertisement
The fraud victim was therefore invited to a video conference via email. All the others in it are AI-generated fake images of people from the company who incited the victim to make a total of 15 transfers worth a total of HK$200. The victim only discovered the fraud during a personal conversation with her boss.
An encounter full of falsehood
According to the report, details of the incident came from the Cyber Security Department of the Hong Kong Police. This assumes that the criminals obtained internal videos from the unnamed company. They were then supplemented with AI-generated sounds, so that under certain circumstances, the animation itself would not have been computer-generated. The scam victim was the only real person in the video conference, but he didn't notice anything. The report does not mention what happened to the transferred funds, but it can be assumed that the amount in the millions has disappeared.
Through this announcement, the police in the Chinese Special Administrative Region are said to want to raise public awareness about the new scam. Until now, these scams are mostly carried out via one-on-one conversations: employees are tricked by their alleged bosses into transferring money to an account via email or phone. The incident in Hong Kong shows that criminals are now able to simulate entire meetings online, police wrote. People now have to be vigilant even in meetings with many participants. Details should therefore be questioned on known communication channels, and questions should be asked in the meetings themselves to verify identities.
(meh)
