The Cyber Defense eMagazine November Edition for 2023

There is still much to understand and learn about AI, and it is crucial that organisations are aware of the
risks. With full transparency into the algorithms and tools to combat potential fraudsters, organisations
can effectively protect themselves and avoid breaching data privacy.
Threat Actors Taking Advantage of AI Vulnerabilities
AI systems can be incredibly efficient at managing large amounts of information on behalf of data
analysts. The problem with this is AI systems like PMax have difficulty differentiating between positive
user engagement, and more malicious actions taken by fraudsters.
The challenge with PMax is all user engagement is viewed as positive or legitimate, and threat actors are
exploiting this algorithm. Fraudsters are capable of creating fake intent signals, which trick systems into
thinking the signal is a user with a legitimate interest in engaging with the site. To accomplish this,
fraudsters create numerous bots to flood systems with fake engagement. This leads to the AI algorithm
optimising toward the source of the invalid traffic, resulting in wrongly optimised campaigns that divert
and deplete advertising budgets by driving more fake engagement.
Fraudsters are also targeting potential weaknesses in the data privacy of AI platforms like PMax. Google
has implemented multiple features to address data privacy concerns within PMax, such as anonymisation
of user data, user controls/preferences to control their data, and ad preferences. PMax aims to uphold
strong data privacy measures, but vulnerabilities in the system are still possible, as seen in the recent
showing of ads to minors on YouTube.
The vulnerabilities in the system demonstrate the ever-evolving nature of data privacy and the challenge
of ensuring it remains complex and secure. Constant vigilance and adaptions are crucial to address
potential gaps or flaws within systems. Organisations can greatly benefit from using AI within marketing
campaigns, but it’s important to balance its usage with appropriate risk mitigation. Advertisers should not
only utilise AI, but also put countermeasures in place to protect their campaigns against evolving fraud
tactics.
Preventing Fraudulent Activity
With the big budgets involved in marketing campaigns, fraudsters are always on the lookout for a slice of
the profit. Organisations must protect themselves from bad actors getting in the way of achieving
campaign success by ensuring they are optimising toward legitimate sources.
By implementing solutions to identify fraudulent bots, and data collection filters, they can effectively
prevent fraud while meeting data privacy laws and ultimately maintain campaign control.
Organisations can take the following steps to prevent fraud across marketing campaigns:
• Analyse and Optimise Traffic: AI can be leveraged to combat fraudulent traffic. Through effective
analytics and reporting tools, patterns, anomalies or irregularities in traffic can be identified to
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