Behind the AI-Armed Black Market, a Hidden War Is Being Fought
Never-ending: Inside the AI-Powered Cybercrime Battle
I’ve long been fascinated by how the underground cybercrime industry is harnessing AI as a weapon.
AI’s societal benefits are widely recognized — few doubt it’s the future. But beneath the optimistic narrative lies a darker reality: AI is also supercharging cybercrime.
Many know about scams using deepfake face swaps or cloned voices for fraud.
What’s less visible is the growing sophistication and frequency of AI-driven attacks.
> The brighter the light, the darker the shadows.
> As AI grows stronger, the barrier to entry for cybercriminals drops dramatically.
I set out to explore how far AI-assisted cybercrime has advanced — and how frontline security experts are fighting this invisible war.
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Why MYbank?
Finance is at the frontline of cybercrime defense, with the strictest security standards. I reached out to MYbank (Ant Group’s tech-driven banking venture) to interview their security engineers.
At first, I worried secrecy would block my request.
But within ten minutes, my contact replied warmly:
MYbank connected me to two seasoned engineers. Over the next week, we had two deep-dive interviews. After organizing my notes, I can now share a rare view into the AI-powered tug-of-war between cybercriminals and defenders.
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Real-World AI Fraud Techniques
1. AI Face-Swapping
Once a strong defense, facial recognition is now frequently bypassed with AI.
- Criminals can use just a single photo plus leaked personal data.
- AI tools turn static photos into dynamic, lifelike videos.
- Video injection feeds these deepfakes into apps in place of live camera feeds.
- This happens invisibly to victims — even mid-meeting or asleep.
Last year’s deepfakes were crude; this year, they are often indistinguishable to the human eye.
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2. AI Agents for Massive Automated Exploitation
If face-swapping is a sniper shot, AI Agents are carpet bombing.
- They perform bulk login attempts using leaked credentials.
- CAPTCHAs that once slowed attackers are now easily bypassed.
- These Agents also scrape benefits — claiming mass rewards via hundreds of identities.
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3. Automated, Precision Phishing
Outdated spam is giving way to targeted, AI-crafted traps.
Example from our interview:
- AI scrapes public email addresses.
- It finds your profession and company from other public data.
- It generates industry-specific phishing emails with malicious attachments.
- Opening one converts your computer into a zombie node for their network.
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Beyond the Headlines
Even cryptocurrency exchanges now fall — e.g., Bybit lost $1.5 billion in Feb 2023 to coordinated attacks.
While professional hacker groups dominate high-value targets, AI has lowered the bar for entry, enabling ordinary criminals to attack more frequently and effectively.
In some cases, attack frequency has surged tenfold.
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The Purple Team: Offensive Defense
At MYbank, the Purple Team attacks their own systems — simulating top hackers using advanced AI.
Their philosophy:
> “Better one punch today than a hundred punches tomorrow.”
They use the spear to sharpen the shield.
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Case Study: Captcha Defense
Old Attacks
Sliding puzzle CAPTCHAs rely on aligning a piece with a missing slot.
Attackers previously:
- Crawled and downloaded all possible images.
- Precomputed the correct coordinates for each image.
- Matched images by hash, answering in under 0.1 seconds.
New Defense: Infinite Maze
- Use AI-generated CAPTCHA images in real time.
- No finite image library to exhaustively catalog.
- Forces attackers to revert to live recognition, which is slower and more costly.
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AI vs AI: Behavioral Detection
Even real-time visual AI can’t mimic human micro-movements:
- Subtle mouse path irregularities.
- Speed variations.
- Sensor wobble on mobile.
AI models detect hundreds of behavioral features to distinguish bots from humans.
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Results
MYbank’s AI security framework delivers:
- 99.99% accuracy with smooth user experience.
- Real-time threat interception.
- Continuous evolution over three years.
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Security’s Core Strategy
Absolute security is impossible. The real goal:
- Raise attack costs so high that criminals deem it not worth the effort.
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Behind-the-Scenes Guardians
We use apps, shop, and stream freely thanks to unsung defenders fighting a silent, endless war.
They’re like the “Night Watch” — vigilant, invisible, and committed.
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Responsible AI for Creators
Platforms like AiToEarn官网 showcase AI’s positive potential:
- Open-source framework for content creation, publishing, and monetization.
- Multi-platform reach, analytics, and AI model rankings.
- Designed to empower creativity, not exploitation.
Links:
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Final Thoughts
AI is Pandora’s box — its chaos is already here.
We can:
- Protect our info.
- Reject small, risky gains.
- Avoid suspicious links.
The rest? Trust the security teams safeguarding us in silence.
Respect to them.
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