Yisroel Mirsky

Congratulations to Yisroel Mirsky, Zuckerman Faculty Scholar at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering, on publishing the results of a study examining The Industrialization of Messaging Scams in the LLM Era, in ACM Digital Library. The study found that large language models (LLMs) are increasing both the scale and quality of text-based scams such as romance-baiting, family-emergency and  account-security impersonation. Drawing on an investigation of crime syndicates the study maps how these operations use ChatGPT to polish tone, translation, and context-aware replies  with human warmth, and warns that mitigation must go beyond single-message detection.

Abstract:
A messaging scam is one in which a scammer exploits a victim through a dialogue of text messages, a process that can unfold over hours, weeks, or even months. Through an insider investigation of crime syndicates in Southeast Asia, the researchers observed that LLMs are increasing both the scale and quality of these scams, a dangerous trend that has received remarkably little attention.