Google Sues Fraudsters Using Bard-Themed Phishing Attack on Social Media

Google has announced that it took legal action against scammers who tried to use the name of Bard AI and other assets to spread malware through social media.

The AI craze is just beginning, and everyone is trying to exploit it, including criminals who see it as an opportunity to spread malware or deploy efficient phishing attacks. Major events, like wars, earthquakes, a global pandemic or an AI revolution, generate criminal activity as threat actors try to take advantage of people’s curiosity and concern.

For example, fraudsters targeted OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool within months of its launch by deploying and creating a similar-looking website and platform meant to trick people into investing money.

Google’s Bard was the target of a different kind of scam, as criminals took out ads on social media and created fake pages to encourage people to “download” the Bard tool. Of course, Bard doesn’t need to be downloaded.

“The fraudsters created social media pages and ran ads that encouraged people to “download” Bard, our freely available generative AI tool that does not need to be downloaded,” said Google’s General Counsel, Halimah DeLaine Prado. “The ads instead led people to download malware that compromised their social media accounts. Since April, we have filed roughly 300 takedowns related to this group of bad actors.”

Of course, the threat actors behind this scheme remain unknown, but Google can use this legal action to work with U.S. domain registrars and disable the domains used in this attack.

“If this is successful, it will serve as a deterrent and provide a clear mechanism for preventing similar scams in the future,” Google concluded.