Automation, fraud farms aid cybercriminals

Skyrocketing scams and card-not-present (CNP) fraud losses can be blamed on bad actors leveraging automation, experts say.Consumer scams reported by bank executives have risen by double-digit percentages since the start of the pandemic, while CNP fraud losses look poised to reach $9.2 billion in 2023, a 15% year-over-year increase, according to research firm Aite-Novarica.While the scale of these attacks is unprecedented, automation plays a surprising role, David Mattei, strategic advisor of fraud and anti-money-laundering at the company, tells Bank Automation News in this episode of “The Buzz” podcast.“Fraudsters are really good at automation, and what that allows them to do is commit fraud at scale,” Mattei tells BAN. “Bots are one of the significant ways that it’s happening today. The other way is via a combination of automation and human fraud farms.”Fraud farms ensure humans step in for bots to complete manual inquiries that cybersecurity measures have made impossible to automate, like CAPTCHA requests and voice commands. This mix of automation and human input mirrors anti-fraud systems at the same financial institutions that fraudsters target, where process workflows and simple tasks are automated to ease workloads for employees.Regulatory developments in Europe have “squeezed the balloon” of financial services fraud, Mattei says, forcing cybercriminals away from tougher targets but failing to reduce the problem quantitatively. U.S. banks should adopt machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to increase stringency, he says.“I am expecting things to get worse before they get better here in the United States,” Mattei says.