Netcraft Announces New AI-Powered Innovations to Disrupt and Expose Criminal Financial Infrastructure

PRESS RELEASE

LONDON and SALT LAKE CITY, May 8, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Netcraft, the global leader in digital risk protection and threat intelligence, announced its new Conversational Scam Intelligence platform at RSAC in San Francisco, which builds on Netcraft's intentional approach to using AI to stay ahead of criminals and protect client brands and customers.

The FBI reports that US losses to investment and "pig-butchering" scams were $4.6 Billion in 2023, a 38% increase over 2022. Through carefully constructed generative AI, the Conversational Scam Intelligence platform enables Netcraft and its customers to disrupt these nefarious scam attempts at scale, uncovering the underlying financial account networks and deploying countermeasures against criminal infrastructure.

By engaging criminals identified through its proprietary threat intelligence in private message threads, Netcraft's AI exposes the scam in its entirety, extracting critical insight that can be used to disrupt and prevent future attacks. This innovative approach helps protect against tactics like pig-butchering, where scammers leverage direct messages, a previously undetectable threat source, to lure victims into sending money to fraudulent schemes.

Early results show a significant impact, accurately identifying the hidden financial infrastructure used in pig-butchering scam attempts, including thousands of criminal-controlled bank accounts, mule accounts, crypto wallet addresses, etc. Leveraging this evidence, Netcraft's customers can flag or block payments to and from compromised accounts before any transaction has occurred, mitigating risk exposure for banking providers around the globe.

"Conversational scams through email, SMS, and other channels have become an acute pain point for financial institutions and individuals worldwide," said Ryan Woodley, Netcraft CEO. "Our innovative approach leverages the thoughtful use of AI, extensive cloaking techniques, and proactive countermeasures, providing a potent blend of data extraction and criminal disruption."

The regulatory landscape is shifting: US senators are pushing for greater accountability for financial institutions, and the UK now requires institutions to bear a 50:50 financial risk for fraudulent push payments. In response, banking leaders must deploy new strategies to react to current threats and intercept criminal behavior. Critical interventions like the use of AI to increase visibility and deploy proactive countermeasures provide a valuable new tool for anti-fraud, payment risk, and security teams worldwide.

AI, machine learning, and 70,000+ human-written rules are at the core of Netcraft's detection, disruption, and takedown services. Leveraging advances in generative AI to anticipate - and prevent - criminal behavior was a natural next step.

"At Netcraft, we've been leveraging AI for many years to effectively automate the end-to-end process of taking down criminal infrastructure. With continued innovations in generative AI we were keen to identify mechanisms to leverage this innovative technology," stated Robert Duncan, Netcraft VP of Product Strategy. "We're excited about how Conversational Scam Intelligence will lead to positive outcomes for our banking partners and ultimately counteract criminal behavior."

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About Netcraft
Netcraft is the global leader in cybercrime detection and disruption, combining cutting-edge technology with decades of experience to protect organizations of all sizes from digital threats and attacks. Its mission is to detect and disrupt cybercrime at scale through constant innovation, extensive automation, AI and machine learning, and the world's most extensive threat detection data set, delivering a safer online experience for everyone. Headquartered in the UK, Netcraft is the trusted cybersecurity partner for four of the world's largest companies, eleven of the largest banks, and governments of eight of the largest economies in the world. Netcraft's comprehensive threat feeds, early fraud detection capabilities, and swift automated takedowns are unparalleled in the industry, scaling to perform takedowns for nearly one-third of the world's phishing sites, having blocked more than 215 million malicious sites. For more information, visit www.netcraft.com.