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2025-02-06
As the digital landscape evolves, so too do the methods of cybercriminals, with social engineering emerging as a critical and ever-growing threat. 2025 is expected to usher in an era of AI-driven social engineering attacks that are more sophisticated, personalized, and harder to detect. Social engineering, a tactic relying on exploiting human psychology, is an inherent part of daily life, but in the hands of malicious actors, it has the potential to cause significant harm. With AI’s increasing influence, experts foresee an alarming rise in these attacks, ranging from phishing to more complex deepfake-driven schemes.
Summary:
Social engineering is a powerful, age-old technique that preys on human natureâour instincts to trust, cooperate, and connect with others. This concept has long been used for benign purposes, such as in advertising or relationship-building, but in the realm of cybercrime, it becomes a potent tool for exploitation. According to cybersecurity experts, the use of social engineering in criminal activity will only intensify, particularly with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).
In 2025, AI will significantly enhance social engineering campaigns, allowing cybercriminals to execute large-scale, dynamic, and multi-channel attacks. These attacks will leverage deepfake technology, SMS, voice calls, and social media personas to target individuals across multiple platforms, making them more believable and harder to detect. The criminals will also employ AI to gather personal data, making their scams more convincing and tailored to their victims.
Despite efforts to curb social engineering through awareness training and security measures, experts believe these methods have limitations, particularly when they only address the victim, rather than the perpetrator. AI can also be used defensively, but the arms race between attackers and defenders will continue, with AI constantly shifting the balance in favor of the criminals. Ultimately, cybersecurity strategies must focus on resilience rather than trying to eliminate these threats entirely.
What Undercode Says:
The rise of AI in cybersecurity brings an inevitable escalation in social engineering tactics, transforming them into more sophisticated, personalized, and impactful threats. The integration of AI technologies into criminal strategies allows for the automation and scaling of attacks, meaning they can target thousandsâor even millionsâof individuals at once with heightened precision.
At the core of social engineering is a fundamental truth: humans are wired to trust one another. This trait, which facilitates everything from casual social interactions to complex business negotiations, is what makes social engineering such a potent tool for cybercriminals. In its benign form, social engineering is present in daily life, from marketing strategies that encourage consumer spending to interpersonal relationships that rely on subtle cues and signals. However, when used for malicious purposes, it becomes a dangerous weapon that exploits these natural tendencies.
AI’s role in this process has been relatively understated until recently. Now, with the advent of generative AI models and deepfake technology, attackers have unprecedented tools at their disposal. No longer limited to simple email phishing scams, criminals are turning to more advanced methods that can include impersonating voices and faces in video calls, creating highly convincing fake personas on social media, and even launching multichannel attacks that adapt to the victimâs responses in real time.
This dynamic and scalable approach allows cybercriminals to conduct targeted attacks with much greater efficiency. The ability to create deepfake videos, for example, gives attackers a powerful tool to impersonate trusted figures, such as CEOs or government officials, in order to manipulate individuals into sharing sensitive information or transferring funds. This represents a significant shift from the relatively basic phishing emails of the past and opens up new avenues for fraud and espionage.
Experts like Kai Roer, CEO of Praxis Security Labs, stress that social engineering isnât a “problem” to be fixed but rather an inherent aspect of human interaction. Its widespread presence in everyday life complicates efforts to protect against it. Security measures, such as awareness training, are often ineffective because they place the burden of responsibility on the victim, rather than addressing the perpetrator’s tactics. While some forms of training can raise awareness, they fail to change the behavior of individuals who are naturally predisposed to trust and connect with others.
The implication of this is profound. Even the most advanced cybersecurity measures will struggle to keep pace with the ever-evolving strategies employed by cybercriminals. AI will not only make these tactics more sophisticated but will also make them more convincing. As deepfake technology improves, criminals will be able to impersonate familiar voices or faces with near-perfect accuracy. This will make it increasingly difficult for individuals to distinguish between legitimate communications and malicious ones.
Furthermore, the accessibility of these tools means that the barrier to entry for cybercriminals is lower than ever. The dark web is already rife with marketplaces where deepfake technology is available for sale, making it easier for anyoneâfrom small-time criminals to state-sponsored actorsâto leverage AI in their attacks. This democratization of technology means that AI-powered social engineering will no longer be the exclusive domain of highly skilled hackers but will be available to a far broader range of malicious actors.
However, itâs not all bleak. Experts are exploring new ways to defend against these threats, particularly through the use of AI for countermeasures. AI-driven defenses could focus less on detecting social engineering attacks in real-time and more on preventing the successful execution of these attacks. By analyzing context and behavior, AI systems could flag suspicious activities, such as sharing sensitive information in inappropriate circumstances, and alert individuals before they make a costly mistake.
Another promising area of defense is the emerging field of human risk management (HRM). Unlike traditional awareness training, HRM aims to address the root causes of human error by analyzing behaviors and providing real-time feedback to individuals. Powered by AI, HRM platforms can detect patterns that suggest individuals are more likely to fall for social engineering tactics and provide targeted interventions to mitigate these risks.
Despite these advancements, there is a fundamental challenge in countering AI-driven social engineering: the attackers will always evolve. As defenders develop new techniques, cybercriminals will adapt and find new ways to exploit human psychology. The goal, therefore, is not to eliminate social engineering but to develop resilience to it. This means creating systems that can withstand these attacks and minimize the damage they cause, rather than hoping for a perfect defense.
The key takeaway here is that AI will continue to empower social engineering, making it more powerful, scalable, and difficult to detect. While AI-based defenses offer promising solutions, they are unlikely to be the silver bullet that eradicates these threats. Instead, organizations and individuals must focus on building resilienceâboth in their systems and in their behaviorâso that they can survive the inevitable rise of AI-enhanced social engineering attacks.
References:
Reported By: https://www.securityweek.com/cyber-insights-2025-social-engineering-gets-ai-wings/
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