Technology, in the service of evil

Technology makes people's lives easier, but when it falls into the wrong hands it can do a lot of harm. A scalpel in the hand of a surgeon can save a life, used by a criminal can end it. Fourteen people suspected of belonging to a vast network that manufactured and sold weapons created with the help of 3D printers, as well as customers, were arrested in France and Belgium, the Prosecutor's Office in Marseille announced on Monday. Following a year-long investigation by the Cyber Division of the French National Gendarmerie, investigators - during raids carried out at the end of January in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (southeast), Ile-de-France (Paris region ), Grad-Est (north-east) and Midi-Pyrenees - managed to recover eight 3D printers, seven complete 3D weapons, as well as 24 conventional weapons. "It's a first in France", which "doesn't stop worrying us", declared the Marseille prosecutor, Nicolas Bessone, during a press conference where three of the seized weapons were presented. The head of the network is a 26-year-old young man, already convicted of a drug-related crime, who previously resided in the commune of Roquebrune-sur-Argens (in the south-east of France). In the meantime, he moved to Belgium, and the French judicial authorities issued an international arrest warrant in his name. "He shares a libertarian mindset" by joining the "pro-gun movement in the US" whose goal is to "distribute weapons to an ever-increasing number of people to protect the state that he considers totalitarian and oppressive." explained Colonel Herve Petry, head of the French national cyber unit. "The phenomenon is not new, but it has acquired a worrying dimension," said the French colonel. Outside the head of the network, six people are now in police custody: five have been placed under judicial control, and another in preventive detention. All suspects are between 18 and 30 years old, and some have criminal records. Some of them were engaged in the manufacture of weapons, while others acted as intermediaries or distributors. Buyers (collectors or people related to drug trafficking) were also arrested. To escape control, the parts manufactured with the help of a 3D printer were sent one by one to the customer. These weapons, of "good or even very good" quality, are close to "95% of the original model", said Colonel Petry. Those weapons could then be resold at prices between 1,000 and 1,500 euros, "cheaper than a Kalashnikov", according to the Marseille prosecutor.

Another example comes from the financial area. The employee of a Hong Kong multinational was tricked, during a video conference, into carrying out several important banking transactions... before realizing that he was the victim of an orchestrated scam with the help of artificial intelligence. The employee thought he was responding to a request from his boss during a video conference with other employees, but his company lost 200 million Hong Kong dollars, equivalent to 25 million US dollars. As reported by RTHK television, in fact, apart from the unfortunate protagonist, the participants in the virtual meeting had been created by artificial intelligence. So, it was a deepfake scam. "During this multi-person video conference, it turned out that all the people except him were fake, but they looked more real than they really were," said Chan Shun-ching, the chief superintendent. In the course of the discussion, the employee was forced to make approximately fifteen transactions on fifteen different bank accounts. According to the investigators, it was an extremely professional operation. It would have taken months for the fraudsters to obtain video recordings of the company's employees and use them to trick their interlocutors. To achieve this, they used artificial intelligence.