Artificial intelligence, a growing threat to top athletes » What are the newest methods used by cybercriminals

Given the huge sums that athletes earn, they have become very attractive to cybercriminals, especially since, unlike the executives of some top companies, they do not have dedicated digital security teams. Therefore, they are easier targets.

There have always been people around athletes who aimed to take advantage of them to get rich. Perhaps they previously gained their trust and then mismanaged their financial affairs, or perhaps they stole their identity and tried to get money from them or embezzle from them.

Athletes have lost about a billion dollars over the past two decades

But in the meantime, things have changed, and the methods of stealing money from athletes have become more and more sophisticated.

“As the sports industry reaches record levels of revenue, the financial incentives to steal from athletes and profit illicitly have never been greater. The operating manual of fraudsters and organized crime is becoming more complex every year, and the risks have multiplied at every level of the sport,” the consultancy firm EY said in a report quoted by The Guardian.

According to a study by the UK's National Cyber ​​Security Centre, at least 70% of UK sports organizations surveyed have experienced at least one cyber breach or incident. That's because criminals are trying to access the personal data of players that clubs own.

“Sportsmen today face an ever-widening range of threats as criminals continually invent new ways to exploit their trust and relationships. These risks include not only traditional fraudulent schemes – such as rigged poker tournaments, extortion, embezzlement, identity theft and misappropriation of winnings – but also newer forms of crime such as sports betting fraud and unauthorized use of NIL rights [Nume, Imagine și Asemănare]”, he added AY, a firm that claims that between 2004 and 2024, athletes lost approximately one billion dollars, with the rate accelerating in recent years.

In the age of social media, cybercriminals have more and more tools to steal from athletes

But what are the new methods used by criminals? First, they take advantage of media attention, easily accessible biographical information, weak privacy protections, and social media activity to obtain information about athletes.

Then, once certain information is gathered, cybercriminals create “deepfakes”, that is, audio, video and images that are fabricated, but which are very realistic because artificial intelligence is used. They resort to such tools to ask for money from fans, family or loved ones.

“What happens after everybody gets off the field? The first thing they do is go to the locker room, they do interviews and so on, you've got high-quality sound, you've got great 4K video. Pyou can do an impersonation attack, you can deepfake your phone, you can call mom and dad” said Chris Pierson, founder and CEO of BlackCloak, a cybersecurity company.

Another method is to use popular online games. For example, some criminals inserted viruses into the games that a basketball player's children frequently played, and they helped the intruders access the player's personal laptop and phone.

Also, without adequate password protection, hackers can access the security camera system of an athlete's home, tell when no one is home and break into the house.

Another method used recently is phishing. A man, Kwamaine Jerell Ford, posed as adult film actress Teanna Trump and approached several athletes, offering to send them sexually explicit videos.

Then, posing as a fake Apple representative, he asked them for credentials to allow them to watch the videos and took control of the accounts, using the athletes' money.

“Ford allegedly posed as the adult film actress and recruited, tricked and coerced a female victim into engaging in commercial sex acts with professional athletes, based on false promises that the actress would further her modeling career“, claim the prosecutors who worked on the aforementioned case.

“Targeting of high-profile individuals with considerable wealth has reached an all-time high. The harm caused in these cases, especially financially, continues to grow. Artificial intelligence has only accelerated this pace and increased the sophistication of attackers,” concluded Pierson, founder and CEO of BlackCloak.