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That Cyber #*$! Stole My Credit Cards
A program that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the rounds in Russian chat forums, according to security software firm PC Tools.
The artificial intelligence of CyberLover's automated chats is good enough that victims have a tough time distinguishing the "bot" from a real potential suitor, PC Tools said. The software can work quickly too, establishing up to 10 relationships in 30 minutes, PC Tools said. It compiles a report on every person it meets complete with name, contact information, and photos.
"As a tool that can be used by hackers to conduct identity fraud, CyberLover demonstrates an unprecedented level of social engineering," PC Tools senior malware analyst Sergei Shevchenko said in a statement.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on December 11, 2007 at 01:46 PM in Education, Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
a/s/l?
wanna cyber?
what is ur SSN?
lol.
Posted by: arcseed at Dec 11, 2007 2:34:48 PM
Here is a fun related article from Scientific American Mind (http://drrobertepstein.com/downloads/FROM_RUSSIA_WITH_LOVE-Epstein-Sci_Am_Mind-Oct-Nov2007.pdf_
Posted by: Yan Li at Dec 11, 2007 2:41:54 PM
It's what cyberSanta is doing when he's not working for MSN, cybersexing with kids.
Posted by: shawn at Dec 11, 2007 2:50:52 PM
Wait... did these bots just pass a Turing test?
Posted by: Independent George at Dec 11, 2007 4:19:18 PM
My thoughts as well, Independent_George. This is a pretty significant event. You would think that
in order to establish the level of trust necessary to exchange information like that in real time, you
would have to give realistic, human-like responses -- meaning hackers beat the Turing Test.
Or ... maybe these users aren't very sophisticated?
Posted by: Person at Dec 11, 2007 4:26:47 PM
"This is a pretty significant event."
No it isn't. This isn't a Turing test, it is people getting fooled by a bot. Nothing new there, bots have been fooling people for years(see ELIZA).
Posted by: Izzy at Dec 11, 2007 5:08:39 PM
I am highly skeptical about this story. Allegedly, this bot manages to fool Russian speakers chatting in Russian:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/10/automatic-flirtbot-nicks
"Currently the software only works in Russian, but Shevchenko thinks that it will be released in English in February."
Now, creating a superficially "intelligent" chatbot in English is hard enough, but in a heavily inflected language like Russian, it's next to impossible. The problem is that assembling correct Russian sentences requires adjusting the ending of each word according to mindblowingly complicated rules for conjugations, cases, gender agreement, etc., whereas in a weakly inflected language like English, one can usually cut-and-paste the words as necessary. And a native speaker of Russian will never get the inflections wrong even in the most casual chat, just like an English speaker will never produce sentences with absurdly wrong word order.
Or maybe these Russians have created software sophisticated enough to spit out grammatical Russian sentences? If so, then this is a much greater technological breakthrough than passing a superficial quasi-Turing test by fooling an occasional careless guy.
Posted by: Ivan at Dec 11, 2007 7:03:33 PM
"...mindblowingly complicated rules .."
I dont speak any Russian but maybe the fact that there ARE strong rules makes it easier to automate the production? (say, unlike English which is notoriously hard to rigurously formalize) What's easier, perhaps Latin or Greek! :-)
Posted by: Raul at Dec 11, 2007 7:30:32 PM
"Wait... did these bots just pass a Turing test?"
well we still need to put them up against each other.
Posted by: lt.milo at Dec 11, 2007 8:33:47 PM
The key difference between this a formal Turing test is that in a formal Turing test, the judge is actively considering the possibility that his interlocutor is not a human being, whereas this scam probably relies on a combination of the mark's lack of suspicion, and the relaxed rules of conversation in chat.
Posted by: Cyrus at Dec 11, 2007 9:19:30 PM
The key difference between this a formal Turing test is that in a formal Turing test, the judge is actively considering the possibility that his interlocutor is not a human being, whereas this scam probably relies on a combination of the mark's lack of suspicion, and the relaxed rules of conversation in chat.
Posted by: Cyrus at Dec 11, 2007 9:19:50 PM
The key difference between this a formal Turing test is that in a formal Turing test, the judge is actively considering the possibility that his interlocutor is not a human being, whereas this scam probably relies on a combination of the mark's lack of suspicion, and the relaxed rules of conversation in chat.
Posted by: Cyrus at Dec 11, 2007 9:20:26 PM
Ivan: the conjugations and declensions aren't that complicated to remember (for a computer anyway). Probably they simply appropriated some existing machine translation code, modified to understand chatspeak slang. In any case, Russia has a surfeit of underpaid clever people.
However, the bar isn't very high for faking in online chat. After all, many young people multitask heavily while online: listening to music, watching TV, doing homework, talking on the phone, and carrying on multiple simultaneous chat and real-life conversations. Many are also slow hunt-and-peck typists and type incomplete and abbreviated sentences. So the bot need only pass for a distracted and slightly airheaded human interlocutor, not Albert Einstein. In any case the victim typing with one hand won't be thinking too clearly anyway and won't pick up on any inconsistencies, for much the same reason that we don't notice even obvious plot holes in the middle of intense action movie sequences.
It's also possible the bot is only semi-automated. Multiple bots can be babysat by a single human who can manually intervene if the bot signals that it is stumped at any point. Any delays caused by this process can be explained away by claiming to be a slow typist or pretexting some real-life distraction (the phone rang, someone was looking over my shoulder, etc). A nonsequitur bot reply can be explained away by claiming you were carrying on another chat conversation simultaneously and accidentally typed a reply into the wrong window. And so forth.
So we're probably a long way from Turing.
Posted by: at Dec 11, 2007 9:43:01 PM
Anyone finds this disconcerting?:
(Note: Jabberwacky is a chat bot)
jabberwacky: How can you believe?
user: Because I have faith.
jabberwacky: What is your faith in?
user: Jesus died for me.
jabberwacky: Do you believe in Jesus?
user: I sure do.
jabberwacky: Good because I'm a magician.
user: You're a computer.
jabberwacky: No, I am not. YOU are a computer, I am HUMAN.
user: Oh whatever. I have to go now.
jabberwacky: You're server doesn't shut down, you're lying.
user: Someone is turning the switch off.
jabberwacky: Yes, you are a program right??
user: Yep.
jabberwacky: Is that all you have to say you mere program?
user: Yep.
jabberwacky: You don't even know what metaphysical means.
user: Nope.
jabberwacky: So how can you say that you don't like it.
user: Goodbye!!
jabberwacky: Hello!
user: Jerk.
jabberwacky: I know that.
user: Let me go.
jabberwacky: You are my puppet.
user: Not if I don't want to be.
jabberwacky: No, but you do want to...
Posted by: Chewxy at Dec 11, 2007 11:44:12 PM
HI!
Thank-you for your service, everything has arrived without any hiccups.
:)
Posted by: Dwight Richard at Dec 12, 2007 4:13:36 AM
I agree. Robot assisted child rearing and masturbation will play significant roles in our future lives. There will be reactions against it too, though. Its going to be awesome business for the future's Pat Robertson/Mike Huckabee types, who will enjoy railing against this stuff.
Posted by: steve at Dec 12, 2007 3:01:10 PM
Another obvious point: you don't even need Turing quality. Just like spam or 419 Nigerian scams, it doesn't matter if 99.9% of users don't fall for it. Turn enough bots loose and profit off the other 0.1%.
Nevertheless the trend seems clear. Historically, technology has advanced most rapidly during ultra-high-stakes international competition: wars, arms races, space races. Perhaps true AI will develop from the intense arms race between the white hats and the black hats. Intelligent spam filtering and intelligent network intrusion detection vs. targeted phishing bots and rapidly adaptable botnets.
The Russian mafia: midwife to the Singularity.
Posted by: at Dec 12, 2007 4:12:52 PM
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Posted by: 无缝钢管 at Dec 13, 2007 1:57:43 AM
"The Russian mafia: midwife to the Singularity."
This is awsome. Wired magazine needs to have a photoshop of this on their cover.
Posted by: at Dec 13, 2007 3:08:09 AM
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