Artificial Intelligence On Identity theft

Artificial Intelligence is computer science. This gives computers a sophisticated intelligence with a broad rage to do so. This works with data analysis, evaluating, as well as memory and much more. Artificial Intelligence is used to mimic the effects and use of human intelligence in a machine. AI is mostly used in computers but can be used in other devices such as phones and self-driving cars. While artificial intelligence was used in order to be a personal assistant, this comes with a risk associated with it. Artificial intelligence was created to mimic human like intelligence in handheld devices yet opens up a whole new world of crime. While the intelligence may be ‘artificial’ there is a very real risk that it creates, artificial intelligence is linked with crime, more specifically, identity theft. Artificial Intelligence is used in everyday life, many times without a consumer knowing. Companies like Amazon, Google, Apple, use artificial intelligence to do things such as dial a phone or open websites. This takes consumers searches, history, recent visits on websites, popular and most frequently visited websites, all into a recorded database. Not only can artificial intelligence dial phones but they are also used in smart houses. This can be used by unlocking doors, changing temperatures, as well as turning lights off and on. On cell phones, artificial intelligence can transfer money at the tap of a consumer's fingerprint. This is all recorded into the system. This leaves many consumers vulnerable and open to crime and identity theft that many are blind to. Many types of risk has been associated with this such as financial, medical, as well as safety and health. While having credit cards linking to auto save in a computer or phone may be easier, this is leaving a more susceptible way for cyber attackers to attempt credit card fraud. Consumers who use applications on their devices to keep track of their medical ID are at risk of their medical records being exposed to cyber attackers. Many cyber attackers use artificial intelligence to hack in and steal information from someone who frequently uses artificial intelligence systems.

 The Boston Consulting Group writes, “Attackers often use botnets—global networks of hijacked devices (such as PCs, smartphones, and IoTdevices)—to do their dirty work. Botnets are effective tools, but they can only do what the attackers direct them to. Suppose, however, that the command-and-control software directing a botnet is replaced by an AI algorithm that enables it to act in a semi autonomous fashion. The botnet now has the ability to learn which of its attacks are working and which aren’t, and it teaches itself to become more effective based on its results.” By the use of Botnets attackers are learning more effective ways to attack consumers and their identity through the consumers artificial intelligence servers and devices. As stated before, consumers are vulnerable to attacks they are unaware of due to the relevance of artificial intelligence devices. Many companies are also susceptible to artificial intelligence theft. Many companies use one system for their company information, such as: employee records, payroll, and much more. By doing this, and using artificial intelligence such as Apple's Siri or Amazon’s ‘Alexa’ feature, they are leaving themselves vulnerable to attack of their private records. Not only are consumers and companies at risk of financial, medical, and identity theft, companies are also at risk under a liability through the artificial intelligence they use. While companies systems store information to make it easier and more accessible to the consumer using these features, they are opening up consumers information in their system for attack. In 2017, the major company Target, was under attack of their cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. Targets digital security was breached leaving millions of consumers personal and financial data breached. This attack was through Target’s digital security, leaving the company liable for the breach of their system. Not only was financial information at risk from being breached but Target had also confirmed that consumers email address, as well as mailing address had been exposed as well. Target and Apple are not the only companies that have to be aware of the constant threat to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence attacks. Abhishek Gupta writes that Yahoo, eBay, Adult Friend Finder, and Equifax, have all recently had a breach of their cybersecurity (3). Gupta writes, “Approximately 412 million accounts were compromised Adult Friend Finder’s leak which represented about 20 years’ worth of information cutting across 6 databases. The long temporal nature of this leak provides a unique window to the hacker community to find tidbits of information in terms of both old and new perspectives on the online identities of the users. This also comes with the additional burden of revealing unsavory details of someone’s online life with very tangible real-world consequences.” These are all companies and consumers whom of which used artificial intelligence. The damage from this hack can be irreversible and extremely harmful to a user’s social life. 

Gupta also writes, “Yahoo is also a major company that is under these cyber and artificial intelligence attacks. Yahoo confirmed that all 3 billion accounts with them were compromised. The information that was breached was usernames, email addresses, dates of birth, encrypted passwords being leaked, as well as security questions and answers. Furthermore, this only helps to create more robust rainbow tables which can be used as an easy mechanism to break through other online services that have less than ideal cybersecurity practices.” A breach like this ca Continuing on Gupta states, “In eBay’s case, in 2014 all 145 million accounts were compromised leading to the release of names, dates of birth, email addresses, physical addresses and salted-hashed passwords (though eBay declined to comment on the algorithm used to do so). What was of particular concern here is the leak of physical address information which adds another crucial link to the databases maintained by data brokers. Even though financial information was not leaked, being able to link the physical address, specifically the zip code gives away information of income ranges among other things via publicly available datasets from the national statistics databases. In the last case Gupta reviews, Gupta states, “Equifax is one of the largest credit bureaus and the most recent large-scale compromise, more than 140 million accounts were hacked and birth dates, addresses, social security numbers (SSN) and in some cases driver license information was leaked. In about 200,000 cases consumers also had their credit card information exposed. Data brokers and other malevolent entities can pick up this information along with some of the ones mentioned before to create a pretty comprehensive profile of individuals who might have been present in all of the above- mentioned compromises. More importantly, the linking of SSN to other bits of personally identifiable information (PII) prepares unique keys that are invaluable in de-anonymizing large existing datasets.” These are all extreme cases in which cybersecurity and artificial intelligence has severely impacted consumers and users lives that use these sites, servers, and companies. Breaching passwords, addresses, email addresses, security questions, and more are detrimental to identity theft and can severely harm someone's life. Artificial intelligence attackers severely impact users lives fincanially, and socially which can take a mental toll on the ones who are affected. In the research article, “A first look at traffic patterns of Siri,” L. Calviglione touches on the privacy, as well as security, that comes along with this feature of the Apple’s Iphone. Calviglione writes, “As a consequence of its design, Siri sends voice through the network even in the presence of data that has to be considered confidential and locked down in the device. For such reason, all the traffic is encrypted by exploiting Secure Socket Layer then inheriting its flaws like certificate theft. Furthermore, voice data has well-known features making possible statistical-based attacks. As an example, the size of PDUs and the IPT makes feasible the disclosure of a speaker nationality, even using a ciphered channel. Then, such a leaked information can be used to conduct social engineering attacks.” Even what the consumer is speaking into their device is stored opening up attacks that have the ability to breach what the consumer is saying to use against them. The attack through social engineering is yet another way that consumers are vulnerable to a form of identity theft that they may be unaware of. Dibya Mukhopadhyay, Maliheh Shirvanian, and Nitesh Saxena write in the research source, “All Your Voices Are Belong to Us: Stealing Voices to Fool Humans and Machines,” on how human voices are stolen and used by attackers. Mukhopadhyay, Saxena, and Shirvanian conducted a study to imitate how attackers conduct this in real life. This study showed whom may be susceptible to the voice conversion attacks in real communications. Mukhopadhyay, Shirvanian, and Saxena state how to protect oneself from an attack, “Although protecting against our attacks seems challenging, there can be ways to ensure that one’s voice does not get stolen by an adversary in the first place. Such measures may include people’s awareness to these attacks, and people being wary about posting their audio-visuals online. Another line of defense lies in defeating audio monitoring in public places. For example, putting in place stricter policies for audio recording in public or actively preventing audio monitoring by using high frequency audio transmitters that cloak the audio recordings (without affecting human perception). There exist commercial equipment to jam audio and jeopardize audio surveillance systems. Another natural defense strategy would be the development of speaker verification systems that can resist voice conversion attacks by using liveness tests for a speaker. A development in the field of speaker liveness detection is proposed by Baughman et al. In our future work, we plan to study these different defense strategies.” Although there are ways that this theft is avoidable, there still need to be major changes. Not only do the people need to be aware of this but there should also be a higher cybersecurity for everyone. Major companies should not be the only ones with a tough to crack cybersecurity. Humans store their whole lives on their phones, computers, and many more, this means that humans, (not just big companies) should be protected at the highest level of cybersecurity to protect all threats. Another way identity theft can threaten others is through the use of artificial intelligence is through social media. Social media is a feeding ground of personal information to attackers. Most people share their entire lives on social media, making it very easy for cyber attackers. While identity theft has always been around in many forms, these forms are developing to newer and smarter ways. As seen in table one from the article “Identity theft and Social Media,” the evolution of identity theft has only expanded over the years. Shareen Irshad states on social media and identity theft, “It is simply described as a collection of applications that are based on the Internet, which allows its users to generate and exchange information. Its ability to connect societies from all around the world through a single platform attracted more and more people towards it. Initially, social media Websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram thought to be used specifically by the younger generation for socializing and it could not benefit businesses in any way. 

However, as the saying goes, ‘not all that glitters is gold’, these Websites have their fair share of disadvantages as well. The main objectives of this study are two-fold. First to understand the different types of identity theft taking place; on social media networks; and second how the crime of identity theft affects the users of social media and to what extent they are aware of its consequences together with prevention techniques to avoid it.” Many people of the younger generation to cling to social media, sharing everything they can with their friends, yet the younger generation is unaware that they are making themselves vulnerable to identity theft while oversharing on their profiles. Irshad also states, “A recent statistic of June 2017 shows the most popular social networking Websites in the world. Again, Facebook takes the lead with 1.94 billion active users followed by Youtube with 1 billion users. The popularity of Facebook is evident in this statistic as there is a huge gap between Facebook and its counterparts. The top five most favored social networking sites according to the number of active users are Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter and Reddit.” This shows the most commonly used social media app. with 1.94 billion users on facebook, this takes the strongest lead of any site and the popularity numbers are also largely above other sites. Facebook is also linked with many instances of crime and it doesn't stop there. The most popular crimes committed on social media are cyber-bullying, hacking and identity theft, as well as business spying, and robberies while on vacation. While there is a tremendous amount of crime that goes through social media, Identity theft ranks second, making it an extremely big problem for those who may be unaware of their risk. While social media is just an online site, it can be very real and very harmful. Many use the same password for multiple accounts, many of whom auto-save passwords into their accounts using artificial intelligence, leave themselves vulnerable to cyber attackers. Once they get one password is it not uncommon they will get another one of your accounts, like other social media sites, financial accounts, as well as email and medical records. Not only are the users vulnerable on the site itself, but also the online crime rate is 23.96 percent, compared to other countries in the low single digits. Facebook is the biggest culprit of cyber crimes. It is reported that over one third of the users on facebook provide at least three things that can lead to their identity being stolen. Facebook also is a major company that has fell victim to a cyber-attack with the use of artificial intelligence. In 2012, Facebook came out and admitted their data had been leaking, giving out their phone numbers as well as email addresses. Again, opens the users up to cyber attack and exposes information that could be used to steal their identity. This again is where prevention comes into play. Many people auto-fill or auto-save passwords into websites on their phones, Ipads, computers, and other devices. Avoid auto-fill or auto-saving credit card information. Do not use the same password for different online accounts. Avoid using the Siri or Alexa features companies might offer. Avoid posting location updates, as well as geo-tagging photos being posted. These are all factors that can heighten your chances of being a victim of cyber attacks. Without doing these things your chances of identity theft or cyber attackers are lowered. Many people fall victim to these because of their unawareness to the situation and online scams. Identity theft has developed in many ways and continues to develop new ways to hack and obtain user information. Artificial intelligence is a new way many cyber hackers are using to obtain information and steal identities in ways such as financial, medical, social, and much more. AI was made to mimic human intelligence in technology. While this can be used in consumers everyday lives to help them. There are risk factors that contribute to and could be avoided by doing things to keep your safety online. Artificial intelligence keeps consumers online activity logged and stored in order to further assist them. What many do not know is that this is a risk for identity theft. From auto-fill passwords and financial information, to fingerprints, to dialing phone numbers and opening websites, these are all ways consumers are vulnerable to the attack. Social media also heightens their chances by filling out information about themselves that can be used to steal identity. The use of artificial intelligence, while doing good, it is not a solution to the privacy and security of the users information, in fact it is hurting their chances of privacy and safety. Artificial intelligence is directly linked to identity theft, and while AI is a convenient way to store many things, it harms others by making them more susceptible to being a victim of cyber attackers.