Redcoat AI

Great post, John Whaley! We're working with a customer now who is using our API to fight fraud flowing through their platform, they consider it one of the biggest risks to their business.

PSA: With all the CrowdStrike craziness happening right now, there are lots of phishing attempts leveraging this incident to attack enterprises. (As expected.) The attackers are impersonating CrowdStrike support via email or phone calls, or selling scripts that will fix the problem (and also install a backdoor on the system). There is a lack of clear information from CrowdStrike about the attack, so a lot of organizations will fall for these attacks. One benefit of Redcoat AI is you can see these attacks happening in real-time against your employees, even if the attacks come via personal messaging channels like SMS or WhatsApp. It is eye-opening to see attackers jump on these news trends within hours!

"Marshall said family offices often have minimal staff with access to highly sensitive information about a wealthy family’s finances and private companies. Since family offices value efficiency and speed over risk management, he said, today’s family offices often don’t have adequate technology and planning in place for possible cyberattacks." https://lnkd.in/eQ_rBhw7 Redcoat AI can help! We make it easy for non-security professionals to protect their organization from social engineering.

After our Redcoat AI launch, I had the privilege of doing an interview on the NYSE trading floor about Redcoat AI and the future of cybersecurity and generative AI. It was my first time on the NYSE floor and it was an amazing experience. Thanks to Lake Dai and Sancus Ventures for helping to arrange it! Do you agree that generative AI will be the most impactful change so far in cybersecurity? Beating out the shift to cloud computing? And we are both 1) in a massive GenAI hype bubble, and 2) will also see a new trillion-dollar company founded in GenAI? #nyse #cybersecurity #startups #generativeai #genai

Watch out for student loan forgiveness scams! Since student loan forgiveness is back in the news, a new wave of an old scam is showing up. An example message: Hello my name is XXX XXXXXX on behalf of the Student-Loan Debt Department. We tried to contact you and have not heard back. Your Student-Loans are eligible for forgiveness under the new 2024 guidelines. Your case number is #31827, and your file will remain open in my system for only one more day. Please call our dedicated eligibility line at: 8­­­­44-3­6­1­-60­39 Thank You, XXX XXXXXX How can offering to wipe out debt be a scam? It can go a few ways: 1) You will need to give personal information, enough for identity theft. 2) At some point, there will be a processing fee. 3) Or, they will pretend to over pay the loan amount and need a refund from you.

https://lnkd.in/g57zMvUm A great episode about social engineering and (at the end) voice cloning.

It is interesting to see how much social engineering has evolved over the last year. Via our Redcoat AI customer base, we see firsthand how attackers have been adjusting tactics in the new GenAI world. From Q1 data, we are projecting a 𝟭,𝟮𝟵𝟲% increase in smishing attacks in 2024. Some observations: 1. 𝗦𝗽𝗮𝗺 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝘁, 𝗽𝗶𝗴 𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻. Now there are far fewer "Urgent Notification regarding Your USPS package" or "Unusual Activity Detected on your US Bank Account!" messages. This is partially due to a lockdown on messages that include links, and an iMessage security feature that prevents clickable links from unknown contacts. Now, pig butchering scams, where the attacker attempts to get to know you to earn your trust, are far more common. 2. 𝗛𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀. In the past, social engineering attacks were generic with the same messages spammed to everyone. Now, the messages are often targeted, including the person's name and some details about their location. 3. 𝗢𝗯𝘃𝗶𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗚𝗣𝗧/𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗔𝗜 𝗯𝘆 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀. The earliest adopters of most new technology? Scams and porn. GenAI is no different. Misspellings, bad grammar, language idiosyncrasies (e.g. "kindly") are much less common now as the scammers use GenAI to create more fluent and targeted scams. Got an interesting phishing message recently? Post it here, or forward it to phish@redcoat.ai. Want protection for your mobile device from scams? Download Redcoat AI for personal use on iOS or Android: https://redcoat.ai/try

https://lnkd.in/dAWUrFS3 The article gives these bullet points: * Resist the urge to act immediately. * Don’t send money if you’re in doubt. * Secure your accounts. * At work, train your staff. The problem with defending against social engineering is the attacker is very good at removing or overriding your doubt, and increasing your urge. It is literally their job and they get a lot of practice being very good at it. Our solutions help by filtering these scams and letting your users practice reacting to them.

 🚀 Today, Redcoat AI is emerging out of stealth, armed with our mission to protect individuals and organizations against AI-powered cyber threats. Everyone knows someone—a grandparent, parent, or a loved one—who has fallen victim to a scam. For my co-founder Mike Morris, the wake-up call came when one of his children was extorted on social media during a family vacation, an ordeal that even involved the FBI. He felt extreme anger at the perpetrator, and also shock — despite all the strides in cybersecurity, there wasn’t an adequate solution protecting end users against attacks on personal channels. This is a growing problem, with global losses to scammers exceeding $1T in 2023. And with GenAI, bad actors now have frighteningly powerful tools at their fingertips. Cybersecurity has changed forever. We began building at Inception Studio, a nonprofit accelerator for seasoned founders. Alongside Kelly Byrd and Mike Morris, we explored how we could utilize AI to counteract this new wave of personalized and realistic social engineering attacks. Over a weekend, we built the first prototype that became the genesis of Redcoat AI. After seeing what was possible, we felt compelled to build a solution. Our platform leverages the latest AI innovations to offer organizations a dual-layer of defense: an automated red teaming service to simulate social engineering attacks, and a mobile defense mechanism that safeguards communication across platforms like SMS, WhatsApp, and others. We're also excited to announce a $4.2M funding round led by Pear VC, with contributions from Leonis Capital, Sancus Ventures, Kyber Knight Capital, J2 Ventures, and other esteemed investors. Their support is a testament to their confidence in our vision and mission. We’re eager to show you how Redcoat AI can protect your organization against AI-powered cyber attacks today. Please reach out to me and we can hop on a call.

https://lnkd.in/dzZbR3y6 "Ryu explains that the blend of social engineering and technology allows these contemporary vishing scams to victimize even those who are aware of the danger of vishing and how their operators work." This ^^^ makes a great point I wish I heard more often. When talking about phishing and social engineering, I often hear people use words like "falling for a scam", "being fooled", or describing themselves as being "sophisticated enough" to know what to look out for. The implication is that victims were not smart enough to avoid a mistake. It's not about being more sophisticated or smarter. We're all at risk. Constant absolute vigilance is not possible. Social engineering can work against anyone at some point. Generative AI makes it cheaper for the scammers to keep trying sophisticated attacks. If y want to learn how we use generative AI to help fight these types of scams, send me a message!