Southeast Asia has become a hotbed for cybercrime gangs, which burned through $37 billion last year through romance investment schemes, cryptocurrency fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling, according to a new United Nations report.
Cybercriminals in countries such as Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos are increasingly using malware, generative artificial intelligence, and deepfakes to commit fraud. A report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reveals that.
“The transnational organized crime threat in Southeast Asia is evolving more rapidly than at any previous point in history,” the report said. First quoted by Fortune Magazine.
Major organized crime groups are increasingly using poorly regulated online gambling platforms and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) to move billions of stolen dollars into the financial system.
“Organized criminal groups are converging to exploit vulnerabilities, and the situation is rapidly outpacing governments' ability to contain it,” Masoud Karimipour, UNODC's regional representative for Southeast Asia, said in a statement.
“Using advances in technology, criminal groups are committing fraud, money laundering, underground banking and online fraud at scale and harder to detect.”
Organized crime groups have trafficked hundreds of thousands of people to Southeast Asian countries and forced them to work in hotel and casino fraud centers. According to a report from Bloomberg.
According to Kimberly Sutherland, vice president of fraud and identity strategy at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, these fraud centers are also popping up around the world.
The technical experts at these fraud centers can speak multiple languages and communicate with victims in each language, making the scams appear more legitimate, Sutherland told the Post.
As AI technology rapidly expands, so too does AI-enabled crime.
Mentions of deepfake-related content increased by 600% in the first half of 2024 across monitored underground markets and cybercrime groups in the region, according to a UN report.
Sutherland said human-initiated cyber attacks have plummeted during the pandemic, while bot attacks have skyrocketed.
But thanks to advanced AI technology, human-initiated attacks are rebounding, she said.
“We believe this is highly correlated with AI attacks, as they make it easier to create legitimate-looking fraud and more difficult for businesses and humans to detect,” Sutherland said. told the Post.
Low barriers to entry, lack of effective government regulation, and increased Chinese investment in Southeast Asia's cyber sector are contributing to the growing problem, said Irina Tsukelman, president of security strategy firm Scarab Rising. he told the paper.
Individuals with low levels of cyber literacy are typically “easy prey” for scammers, and while digital natives have been able to identify scams, artificial intelligence can counter this trend by creating more convincing schemes. Zuckerman said that could change the
In the workplace, for example, deepfakes or voice cloning could imitate the image and voice of someone's boss, Zuckerman said.
These same technologies can be used to mimic the look of government reports or recreate signatures for client projects.
“To avoid falling for the increasingly street-savvy cybercriminals, companies and governments should educate the public about these techniques and encourage them to identify red flags with training videos and scenarios,” Tsukerman wrote in the Post. told.
