Eset: New Investment Fraud Floods Online Space (2)

Bratislava, December 26 (TASR) - The number of detected digital threats in Slovakia rose by 9 percent in late 2024 in comparison to the year's first half and this was mostly caused by the emergence of a new type of investment fraud that has flooded the Slovak online space, it follows from Eset Threat Report H2 2024. "The investment fraud designated HTML/Nomani by Eset is disseminated through fake ads on social networks, particularly on the Meta platform. The ads misuse celebrities and firms who lure users to try out fabulously advantageous investments," reads the text. A common tactic of these fake ads is to employ videos doctored by AI, the so-called deepfake videos, and make it appear that they contain TV hosts, successful entrepreneurs or household-name politicians making claims they've never actually made. "Utilizing AI this way, the attackers impersonated, for instance, President Peter Pellegrini, Finance Minister Ladislav Kamenicky and Eset General Director Richard Marko," added Eset. The ads often contain links to news report websites that appear legit and trustworthy, although they are fake, or imitate legitimate firm websites. The fake webs invite users to provide their contact details and subsequently a telemarketing agent reaches out to the victims, guiding them to make an initial "investment" of €250. Whereas this type of threat went virtually undetected in early 2024, it ended up in the ninth place in late 2024, making up almost 3 percent of all detected threats in Slovakia. "Even though more experienced users might see this scheme as an obvious glaring fraud, the attackers hope that at least a proportion of vulnerable strata of society will fall for this. Lips of individuals talking in deepfake videos move in an unnatural manner, but this could be overlooked by victims watching them on smaller screens. In addition, we expect that this fraud will become only more convincing as the artificial intelligence continues to improve," added Eset expert Ondrej Kubovic. mf