Israelis and Americans should prepare themselves for a new sextortion scam originating from Middle Eastern criminal networks, Ori Segal, the CEO of Cyvore, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
Explaining the sextortion scam, Segal said high-net-worth individuals, particularly those in relationships, were being targeted with video call requests. Once these calls are answered, the men are exposed to a naked woman self-stimulating. Once the call ends, the video is manipulated to make it appear as though the nude woman is a 12-year-old girl, and the man is urged to pay a fee to ensure they are not reported as a sex offender.
By only manipulating the woman’s face with AI, the video appears more realistic, and the target audience is more responsive to what is on screen, rather than by using generative AI to manufacture the entire scene, Segal said.
While he said that the extortion attempts had so far primarily targeted individuals in the United States, he predicted they would soon expand to targeting Israelis.
“They use very special AI tools to change the figure of the woman that you just saw into a child. After they’re doing that, you suddenly get a message from them that say, ‘Hey, we have some evidence about you,’ and you don’t know what they’re talking about, and they start sending you pictures or part of the video, and then you get a shock because you see yourself watching a 12-year-old girl playing with herself,” he explained, adding that the goal of such interactions is to create a sense of panic and urgency so the target doesn’t have time to think before handing over large amounts of money.
Referencing the Hebrew saying, “Lech tokhich she’ein lecha achot” (“Go prove that you don’t have a sister”), he noted that these scams were particularly effective, as it is difficult to prove innocence, and the label of “pedophile” is particularly devastating.
It was only by chance that one of the victims was with his wife at the time of the interaction that the extortion scheme was exposed, Segal said, adding that the large majority of those targeted are unlikely to have sought help from law enforcement out of fear of not being believed.
“I’m guessing many people will pay this penalty to the fraudster in order to forget about it and put it behind them,” he said.
Cyber criminals have rapidly become more confident with advancements in AI
Cybercriminals have rapidly become more confident, and their techniques more refined, with advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), Segal explained. He told the Post that the last two years have seen a 2,500% increase in the number of phishing attempts and a 1,000% increase in credential phishing. On Wednesday alone, there were 183 newly reported phishing attempts targeting Israelis.
The CEO of a major Israeli cybersecurity company said that many criminal groups were using platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook to evaluate targets, even creating a psychological profile to determine the most effective time to make the call.
The targets are “people with something to lose,” whether that be a relationship or a respectable career, and the information is easily obtainable online, he said.
“I think this is a well-organized group that invested a lot of money into that kind of a scam, and they are not afraid of anyone [law enforcement]. And it’s going to be like mass market in one hour, they can do so many phone calls,” he said, theorizing that they would make hundreds of thousands of dollars with the mass reproduction of this scam.
Do not answer calls from unknown numbers
As a first line of defense, Segal stressed that it was essential not to answer video calls from unknown numbers and to immediately hang up if they encounter the aforementioned situation. For links to private video call sessions, he urged people to use Cyvore’s free web tool: https://www.scanmysms.com/en
The website can quickly inform users whether a link can be trusted and also helps catalog new types of cyberattacks.
It was thanks to Cyvore’s tool that Israel was able to so quickly identify a fake Home Front Command spoof text, which would download an app enabling hostile actors full access to their victims’ phones.
“[In] the world that we are living today, you cannot believe anyone on anything anymore. You don’t know who is calling you, you don’t know who sent you the mail, who sent you the WhatsApp, with whom you are talking in a video call,” Segal warned.
“Everything can be fake, and you need to use tools in order to avoid that, because every day tons of people lose either money, credentials, or [things] much more dangerous than that.”
