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Abstract
A vishing attack is a form of social engineering where attackers use phone
calls to deceive individuals into disclosing sensitive information, such as
personal data, financial information, or security credentials. Attackers
exploit the perceived urgency and authenticity of voice communication to
manipulate victims, often posing as legitimate entities like banks or tech
support. Vishing is a particularly serious threat as it bypasses security
controls designed to protect information. In this work, we study the potential
for vishing attacks to escalate with the advent of AI. In theory, AI-powered
software bots may have the ability to automate these attacks by initiating
conversations with potential victims via phone calls and deceiving them into
disclosing sensitive information. To validate this thesis, we introduce ViKing,
an AI-powered vishing system developed using publicly available AI technology.
It relies on a Large Language Model (LLM) as its core cognitive processor to
steer conversations with victims, complemented by a pipeline of speech-to-text
and text-to-speech modules that facilitate audio-text conversion in phone
calls. Through a controlled social experiment involving 240 participants, we
discovered that ViKing has successfully persuaded many participants to reveal
sensitive information, even those who had been explicitly warned about the risk
of vishing campaigns. Interactions with ViKing's bots were generally considered
realistic. From these findings, we conclude that tools like ViKing may already
be accessible to potential malicious actors, while also serving as an
invaluable resource for cyber awareness programs.