“The rise of AI agents like Operator shows the dual nature of technology — tools built for productivity can be weaponized by determined attackers with minimal effort. This research highlights how AI systems can be manipulated through simple prompt engineering to bypass ethical guardrails and execute complex attack chains that gather intelligence, create malicious code, and deliver convincing social engineering lures.”
When something becomes substantially easier to do, the prevalence of it is going to increase substantially as well. So it’s not that phishing is going to get any more complex or deceptive. It’s that it’s going to come from 10x+ more endpoints. And while you personally may feel immune, it’s all a numbers game to the scammer. The more attacks they send out, the higher their success rate.
If you’re already getting 10 scam calls and texts a day, imagine getting 100. If you’re getting 100, imagine getting 1000.
I remember back when there was a time where when this occurred in the USA, it was the telephone company’s responsibility to shut it down, for all the people getting all that spam from a particular source at once.
Then that was changed, sometime after Obama and before Biden.