Hospitals should be on the lookout for "vishing," a new form of cybercrime that uses artificial intelligence, a health system CIO said.
Hackers have been taking snippets of a person's voice and using generative AI to turn them into "vishing," or voice phishing, attacks, according to April congressional testimony from Scott MacLean, CIO of Columbia, Md.-based MedStar Health and chair of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives. The cybercriminals place phone calls or leave voicemails pretending to be other people or organizations.
"Collectively, providers fend off complex attempts at cyber intrusion every day, but it only takes one sophisticated criminal to gain entry," Mr. MacLean testified. "With the increased use of generative AI, criminals are becoming more brazen in weaponizing this new technology."
He pointed to a February report from cybersecurity Enea that found vishing, "smishing" (SMS or text phishing) and phishing (email scams) grew more than twelvefold following the launch of ChatGPT.