Face in profile: how AI helps extortionists on dating sites
Dating sites and bots are increasingly attracting the attention of cybercriminals. The trend in recent months has been attacks on wealthy lovers of having an affair on the side. However, people with strict moral views, whose photos are used by unfaithful husbands and wives, have also added headaches. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
An ideal environment for crooks
For intruders on dating sites, there is a huge room for maneuver: here people open up faster, it is easier to share personal information, and it is very difficult to verify the true intentions of the interlocutor. Those who are in a relationship or married are particularly vulnerable: the fear of exposure to a partner, family, or employer makes them more accommodating. And, alas, it's not just about the risks of material loss — at the end of October, it became known that pro-Ukrainian cyberterrorists had managed to persuade 56 users of one of the Telegram dating services to cooperate with blackmail. They were talking about young people (up to 24 years old), but older users also have something to fear from such resources.
Izvestia's source in law enforcement agencies reported an increase in attacks against respectable mature people seen on dating sites. Not all victims rush to contact the police, given the piquancy of the situation. Still, there are plenty of such examples.
What has the neural network changed?
Kaspersky Lab cybersecurity expert Vladimir Dashchenko notes that thanks to AI technologies, fraudulent schemes are now taking on a larger scale and becoming more plausible.
— With the help of generative models, criminals create convincing profiles, and chatbots help to conduct correspondence: they copy a person's style, step by step strengthening the victim's trust. At the same time, scammers can use audio and video fakes to simulate a real conversation and enhance the feeling of live communication," Dashchenko explains.
The expert adds that criminals often either lure out personal photos or generate compromising images. They can search for the relatives of the alleged victim based on open social media data, images, and information from leaked databases.
According to a law enforcement source, criminals often attack the owners of abandoned accounts. A person who has left a fragment of personal data (it can be a photo, date of birth in combination with the name or ID of a social network account linked to a mobile phone) is punched through leak bots. These arrays of information often store contact information, family ties, bank rating, and marital status information.
Someone else's face in someone else's correspondence
A separate and particularly disturbing category of victims are people who do not use dating services at all. Attackers use their photos from open sources to create fake accounts, enter into correspondence, receive compromising materials from an interlocutor, or extort personal information — and then disappear. In the future, the person whose face appeared on the avatar may suddenly find out that someone is demanding money, threatening to make public "his" correspondence or images generated with his participation.
Law enforcement and cybersecurity experts confirm that fraudsters purposefully use other people's photos to create attractive and trustworthy profiles. In this case, the "owner" of the person himself may become a victim. Criminals find a person by photo through reverse image search, establish their social circle through open profiles on social networks and begin blackmail.
Even if a person has never sent intimate photos, criminals can generate compromising materials based on ordinary photos from open sources.
"An equally serious threat is blackmail based on visual content," a cybersecurity expert at Kaspersky Lab told Izvestia. — Criminals either extort personal photos from the user, or use AI to generate compromising materials, and then demand money for not publishing these images. At the same time, victims can easily find their loved ones through open data on social networks — shared photos, kinship marks, mentions in posts — as well as through image search and information from leaked databases in order to use this data for pressure and blackmail.
According to a law enforcement source, one cannot treat a profile photo as an identity card: the image may be copied from an open social network, an old questionnaire or another publication. At the same time, the use of other people's images in dating is very common. For example, operatives from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tatarstan reported that scammers create questionnaires with other people's photos and can send intimate pictures previously obtained by deception from other people.
How the trap works
Correspondence can begin quite normally: a coincidence of interests, compliments, discussion of the meeting. Then the interlocutor offers to go to the messenger, asks for a photo, phone number or other information. This does not mean that every such transition is associated with a crime, but it can give an attacker additional clues.
— It is important to understand that banning a screenshot in an application does not at all deprive a criminal of the opportunity to capture a "burning" photo using a second smartphone or special software, — Konstantin Parfenyev, an expert in the field of IT security, told Izvestia. — And a face, even on dating sites with a high level of security, is the key to a person's personal data. Special bots are highly likely to identify a person from a picture, even if the last portrait on the Web was taken 10 years ago.
To establish an identity, information is used that the person himself posted in the public domain. Or it was done by his friends and family — joint photos, marks and mentions.
The threat may be a bluff, but it cannot be ruled out.
"In some cases, attackers arrange an auction with a person for whom these pictures are important, for example, with a wife who suspects her husband of cheating," a police source explained. — In this case, the jealous person does not see the basic threats. It can follow the link in the email, which will lead to an infection of the device. Or pay a criminal for proof of treason. And after the transfer of money, criminals will be able to exert pressure for allegedly financing the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Organized cybercrime attacks are always multi-vector. They are interested in money, personal data of a person, the possibility of using it for terrorist purposes. And best of all, it's all at once," says Parfenyev.
He stressed that malware can even be packaged in a photo attached to an email.
The police warn that there are no guarantees that negative content will be deleted after the transfer of funds.
"Scammers can ask for money over and over again, promising to destroy the photos," says a police source.
Invented abroad
The first victims of this scheme were Americans who practiced virtual sex with Filipino women. Later, variations appeared — fans of paid sex were filmed on hidden cameras and blackmailed. Internet blackmail came to Russia more than 15 years ago. The first victims were visitors to prostitution dens, as well as girls who were looking for rich lovers. Those who corresponded with scammers out of curiosity also suffered.
"The criminal world makes a profit from everything it has invested in: if it is an intimate photo or video, they initially try to "sell" it to the victim, then to the husband or wife, and then it ends up on paid channels on Telegram or other resources," says Vladimir Zykov, president of the Association of Professional Users of Social Networks and Messengers. — There are specialized platforms with "revelations" that are in high demand.
Izvestia previously wrote about one such resource.
Prevention of attacks
Following simple rules of digital hygiene helps to protect yourself from scammers on dating sites.
— Try not to make publicly available information that can be used to find you in real life, such as photos, exact address, or geolocation data. At the first stages of dating, it is preferable to conduct correspondence within the application itself: be on your guard if the interlocutor insistently suggests transferring communication to third—party messengers, explains Vladimir Dashchenko.
He called excessive assertiveness, too quick a transition to talking about money or requests for financial assistance alarming signals.
— All this is a reason to think seriously. If in doubt, it is best to stop the dialogue and use the complaint feature provided in the application. For additional protection, install a reliable security solution on your device — it will help block phishing links and reduce the risk of becoming a victim of fraud," the Izvestia interlocutor summed up.
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