How AI Is Changing Cyber Threats at Laurier

Dear Laurier Community,

The changes brought by AI over the past 5 years can be found everywhere: whether it is in professional writing, research, finance, visual art, or music, these advances have touched nearly every part of our lives, and your work or studies at Laurier is no exception. You may not yet realize it, but AI has also left a permanent mark on the world of cybercrime and will continue to do so as technology continues to advance.

How is AI Used in Cyber Crime?

AI enables cyber-criminals to work more quickly and make more efficient decisions in order to accomplish their goals. Scammers can now automate and orchestrate simultaneous attacks against large numbers of targets to degrees that were not previously possible, meaning the volume and speed of cyber-attacks we observe has increased.

Audio/video deepfakes can be used to strengthen certain types of fraud. They can additionally make some phishing attacks more convincing by allowing fraudsters to correct spelling or grammar mistakes, or by collecting publicly-available information regarding their potential victims so the attacks can be more effectively targeted.

Cyber-criminals also make use of AI-augmented tools for identifying security vulnerabilities within devices connected to the internet or to private networks to which a cyber-criminal has gained access. These tools enable would-be hackers to work more quickly and may require less skill to use in comparison to traditional hacking tools.

Springing a Leak: The Risk of Privacy Breaches through AI Tools

Not all AI security risks are brought about by cyber-criminals as misuse of these tools by the Laurier community can also result in security incidents. Many cloud-based generative AI tools may collect and store the prompts or data uploaded to them or may train themselves on sources of data containing private information. This means that the collected data may later be disclosed (either accidentally or intentionally) while responding to prompts from these tools, causing a privacy breach.

This makes it important to ensure you’re using a generative AI tool that does not store information (prompts, uploaded data) or use it to train their machine-learning models. Laurier maintains a list of approved AI tools and services and ICT’s Service Desk can provide guidance if you are uncertain about which tools can be used safely.

How Do I Keep Cyber Safe?

Ensure your devices are kept up to date with the latest security patches and learn to recognize common types of phishing and fraud. Always be on the lookout for signs like unexpected requests for payment, suspicious links and attachments, and incorrect sender email addresses or domain names.

Familiarize yourself with Laurier’s policy on the use of Generative AI, and reach out to our ICT Service Desk if you’re uncertain whether a specific AI tool is safe to use.

Don’t take every photo or video for granted. AI-generated images and video will only become more difficult to identify in the future and should not be taken as your only source of proof of an event. Look for distorted features, odd text, or unrealistic lighting that may be a sign of AI image generation being used.

Ensuring you’re up to date on the risks associated with these AI tools will help keep yourself and the Laurier community Cyber Safe! Please contact ICT’s Cyber Security team if you have any questions.