TechNet Indo-Pacific 2026

Sessions Speakers Exhibitors Products Press Releases Floor Plan

Synthetic Deception: How AI is Rewriting the Social Engineering Playbook (Room Nautilus I)

This presentation examines how artificial intelligence has fundamentally lowered the skill barrier for social engineering attacks, placing sophisticated impersonation capabilities within reach of a much wider range of threat actors. The presentation uses two documented case studies to trace the evolution of social engineering from skilled human manipulation to synthetic AI-assisted deception. The first is the 2023 MGM Resorts ransomware attack, in which Scattered Spider gained access to MGM's network using a phone call and a LinkedIn profile, and the second is the February 2024 deepfake Zoom call at Arup Group, Ltd., in which a finance employee authorized a $25 million transfer after a multi-person AI-generated video conference defeated active verification attempts. Supported by current research and confirmed law enforcement disclosures, the presentation closes with an assessment of which detection controls are working and which have failed, with practical takeaways for military, government, and enterprise security practitioners.