Cybercriminals complain that artificial intelligence is flooding their forums

Voices of complaint familiar. “I’m disappointed that you’re integrating AI garbage into the site,” one upset person, who posted anonymously, said in an online message. “No one is asking for this. We want you to improve the site, and stop charging for new features.”

Only, this isn’t your average internet user complaining about it Artificial intelligence object had to Their favorite app. Instead, they complain about the Cybercrime Forum’s plans to introduce more productive AI. Like millions of others, scammers, scammers and low-level hackers are alarmed by the encroachment of artificial intelligence into their lives and the emergence of… Low-quality AI regression They are posted in their online communities.

“People don’t like it,” says Ben Collier, a security researcher and senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. As part of a A recent study on how Low-level cybercriminals are using AI, and Collier and his fellow researchers have found increasing opposition to the use of generative AI in cybercrime forums and underground hacking groups.

During the AI ​​boom and hype cycles of the past two years, some people posting on hacking forums have shifted from being positive about how AI can help hacking to being more skeptical about the technology, according to the study, which also involved researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Strathclyde.

The researchers analyzed 97,895 AI-related conversations on cybercrime forums from the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 until the end of last year. They found complaints about people giving “obvious explanations” of basic cybersecurity concepts, complaining about the number of low-quality posts, and concerns about… Google AI Search Overview – Reducing the number of forum visitors.

For decades, cybercrime message boards and marketplaces, often Russian in origin, have allowed fraudsters to do business together. They are places where stolen data can be traded, hacking jobs are advertised, and scammers share it with their competitors. while Scammers often try to scam each otherForums also have a sense of community. For example, users build a reputation for being reliable and forum owners Hold writing competitions.

“These are basically social spaces,” Collier says. “They really hate other people using (AI) in forums.” He says the social dynamic of groups could be corrupted by would-be cybercriminals trying to gain a better reputation by publishing AI-generated hacking tutorials. “I think a lot of them are a bit ambivalent about AI because it undermines their claim to be skilled people.”

Posts reviewed by WIRED on Hack Forums, a space for those interested in talking about hacking and sharing techniques, show the discomfort caused by people creating posts using artificial intelligence. “I see a lot of members using AI to create their topics/posts and it pisses me off because they don’t even take the time to write a simple sentence or two,” one poster wrote. Another said more bluntly: “Stop spreading AI crap.”

In many cases, Collier says, users of multiple forums seem to be bothered by AI posts because they want to make friends. One post cited in the research said: “If I want to talk to an AI chatbot, there are many websites that let me do that… I came here for the human interaction.”

since ChatGPT By the end of 2022, there was significant interest in the hacking capabilities of AI and how the technology could transform online crime. Both sophisticated hackers and such Less capable They were trying to use artificial intelligence in their attacks. While some organized fraudsters have increasingly consolidated their operations Realistic AI face swap technology And social engineering messages Translated using artificial intelligence,Much attention has been paid to the capabilities of generative ,AI to write malicious code and Discover weaknesses.