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Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses threats to the American financial system by China, Iran, North Korea and Russia<\/strong>with David Maimon, Phd. of Sentilink and Georgia State University.<\/strong><\/p>\n Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network<\/strong><\/p>\n Joining me now is Dr. David Maimon. He is the Head of Insights at Sentilink.<\/p>\n Dr. Maimon, great to see you. Thanks for joining us on the program this morning.<\/p>\n David Maimon, PhD., Sentilink & Georgia State University<\/strong><\/p>\n Thank you so much for having me.<\/p>\n Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network<\/strong><\/p>\n We really appreciate it. And I appreciate you sharing your expertise with myself and the audience. You know, obviously, we’re in the midst of some really major geopolitical events.<\/p>\n But I think outside of the economic pressure that’s being exerted and before that, the kinetic pressure that was being exerted, a lot of people don’t recognize that there are also financial fraud and crimes that may be exerted by Iran and some of its allies, sir.<\/p>\n David Maimon, PhD., Sentilink & Georgia State University<\/strong><\/p>\n One hundred percent. We are seeing and we know that in order to engage in kinetic efforts and other types of war activities, you need to sponsor it. You need to make sure that you can afford it.<\/p>\n I mean, you can pay people to engage in different types of activities. And with some of these economies out there, which are more secluded, like North Korea, like Iran, like Russia, with all the sanctions that we impose on them, they need to make sure that they have some money to support their operations. And so because they are so isolated from us as well as from other countries around the globe, they need to find ways to support their operation.<\/p>\n And the way they do that is, unfortunately, by running nation states fraud operations. And that is essentially what this is all about. I mean, we’re seeing major nations, those four nations we just discussed, Iran, North Korea, China, as well as all sort of putting together efforts in order to engage in fraud.<\/p>\n Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network<\/strong><\/p>\n And how does this manifest itself? So if I’m a real American going to my job day to day, how does this, what does this look like to me? How do I see this?<\/p>\n Do I see it?<\/p>\n David Maimon, PhD., Sentilink & Georgia State University<\/strong><\/p>\n Unfortunately, you don’t see that. The type of fraud that we’re talking about, and each country has its own way, they have their own playbook with respect to how to run things and how to engage in different types of fraudulent operations. Most of what you will see as a civilian, as a citizen, will be pretty much nothing, right?<\/p>\n I mean, where we will feel it is more of the financial industry level. That is where we will start feeling it in the next couple of years or so.<\/p>\n Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network<\/strong><\/p>\n So these are like, I’m being very general here, but they’re more like hacks and breaches of major financial institutions trying to worm their way into accounts, you know, try to, you know, afflict some kind of pain and damage.<\/p>\n David Maimon, PhD., Sentilink & Georgia State University<\/strong><\/p>\n Sure. It’s again, it depends, right? I mean, the hacks and breaches, those are things that have been going on for a long period of time by now.<\/p>\n When we talk about the fraudulent operations, the North Korean, for example, are putting together, we’re talking about fraudulent operations, which in some cases will involve them trying to get positions, trying to send employees to get positions in Fortune 500 companies here in the United States, using stolen identities of Americans, using synthetic identities that they groom, then getting paid for this operation, getting paid for their work, and take all this money and simply sponsor the nuclear program with it. That is one example, right? I mean, we know that North Korean also have a very large network, which allow them to steal cryptocurrencies, as well as take over and sort of infiltrate financial institutions.<\/p>\n We know of several financial institutions across the globe that they were infiltrating and stealing a lot of money. In the context of the Russians, on the other hand, we are not seeing so much of that play. We’re seeing them getting more and more involved, sort of provide legal immunity for fraudsters who operate in darknet environments and launch ransomware operations.<\/p>\n After the ransomware operations are launched, all the data leaks are essentially hosted on data farms or websites that are hosted on darknet environments, on other types of environments, which at the end of the day allow the Russians to sort of use in the context of their operation. And then in the context of the Iranian, we see a lot of shell companies that these guys are putting together using stolen identities, synthetic identities, in order to funnel money and sponsor their operation. So each nation has its own play with respect to how to use the money they need to obtain and support their activities.<\/p>\n Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network<\/strong><\/p>\n So I guess that begs the question, how can the West, the United States, Europe, how do you confront, how do you abate these attacks? I mean, it would seem to me that, you know, in any sport, the offense always has the advantage because it knows what it’s going to do. The defense has the challenge of stopping the offense.<\/p>\n I would think it’d be very difficult for central intelligence, some of the other entities within the United States to counter this because she first has to know what it is.<\/p>\n David Maimon, PhD., Sentilink & Georgia State University<\/strong><\/p>\n I think you’re 100% correct, Jeffrey. We first need to know how things look like. And I think that we’re in a point where we know it exists, but we’re not necessarily 100% ready for it.<\/p>\n At the moment, the financial institution, financial institutions across the nation, as well as the government, are all prepared to deal with criminals, organized crime groups who engage in fraud. And in that sense, the tools we have in our box are very different than the tools that you will need to have when you deal with a nation-state. So, for example, the organized crime groups will not have all the resources in the world in order to engage in fraud.<\/p>\n I mean, they have a limited amount of resources to do that. When we talk about nation-state, that’s not necessarily the case. Another very important thing that we need to understand is the motivation.<\/p>\n The motivation of criminals is to simply make money in order to support their lifestyle and, you know, support the organized crime groups in the context of the nations we’re talking about. Money is important for the survival of regimes, but also folks engage in fraud in order to gather intelligence and try to infiltrate to our platforms in order to understand what we do and then use it against us. So that’s another very important thing that we need to be aware of when we sort of try to put together policies as well as acquire tools which will allow us to work with this issue.<\/p>\n And the last thing that we need to remember when we’re dealing with a nation-state is that when you take nation-state and you compare it to an organized crime group, there’s a huge difference with respect to resilience. Maybe if we think about law enforcement and our efforts to sort of take down organized crime groups’ networks, that could work because, you know, we arrest, we disrupt the network. In the context of states and some of the intelligence agencies that work for those states, you know, it won’t work.<\/p>\n I mean, you can arrest an agent here, an agent there, but the operation will keep going no matter what. And so we need to be aware of this issue. We need to be aware of the fact that there are significant differences across the board with respect to nation-state engaging in fraud as well as organized crime group engaging in fraud and make sure that we adjust our operation or sort of think of better tools, more suitable tools, more suitable policies which will allow us to address this issue.<\/p>\n And I think the first thing that we need to be aware of is the fact that this exists and that these nations are after our money in order to sponsor their operation. By doing that, they’re essentially using the same infrastructure that the criminals are using. So maybe that’s a way for us to sort of think a little bit about potential policies and tools which we can sort of deploy in order to deflect some of the operation.<\/p>\n But I think the most important thing for us to remember is that we’re not dealing with organized crime groups, we’re dealing with nations and nations have different resources, different motivations to protect against what they have in mind. We need to completely change our state of mind.<\/p>\n Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network<\/strong><\/p>\n And they have different set of values. I mean, we have, you know, our system is very open, free. We have the ability to move around.<\/p>\n You can’t just, you know, I’m thinking about the moles, I’m going to call them moles that you’re talking about, people that have gotten positions here in the United States. You can’t just pull them off. You know, we don’t just pull people off the street.<\/p>\n You have to have due process if you’re here. You have to, you know, there’s illegal search and seizures. So they actually use our values and our laws almost against us in some ways.<\/p>\n David Maimon, PhD., Sentilink & Georgia State University<\/strong><\/p>\n They do. And that’s quite common, right? In any act of, I mean, I don’t want to say act of war, but, you know, when you are facing an opponent, you’re going to try and use their vulnerabilities as to your advantage.<\/p>\n And essentially that’s what they’re doing. They use some of the loopholes we have here in the United States with respect to how to, how we deal with, you know, different organizations, different individuals, and then they use it against us. That goes without saying.<\/p>\n Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network<\/strong><\/p>\n You know, just to kind of tie things off. I mean, this is, you know, we are in an information age. We have, you know, every time you turn on the TV or you look at your phone and read an article, it’s about AI.<\/p>\n This, I think, grows. I want to get your opinion on this, but I think this kind of grows. It grows tremendously, I guess, because of that, those technologies.<\/p>\n David Maimon, PhD., Sentilink & Georgia State University<\/strong><\/p>\n I agree. And I think, to be honest, one of the reasons why I decided to put together this op-ed that we published in Fox was the fact that we are seeing many of the nation states using a lot of the tools that the criminals are using and are discussing in the online fraud ecosystem that we monitor on a daily basis. So, and that is quite interesting.<\/p>\n As I mentioned earlier, the common denominators across the four nations we’ve discussed, as well as the criminals we monitor, is the fact that most of them are using the resources available on the online fraud ecosystem, so the Darknet, Telegram, as well as other important platforms which are being used by criminals and fraudsters to support fraud. One of the interesting things that we’re able to see in this ecosystem is criminal use of AI to create fake documents and fake driver licenses. We see that on a daily basis.<\/p>\n I mean, we see that the fraudsters are able to bypass all of the tools that are deployed right now. And one of the things that caught my attention was, and that to me speaks volumes to nation states using the same technology, is the Department of Justice had a press release a couple of months ago talking about the North Korean scams, right? I mean, the fact that the employee scams that they engage in.<\/p>\n And when you read the indictment of one of the cases that the Department of Justice has disclosed, you’re seeing that the North Koreans are essentially using AI tools to manufacture the fake driver licenses that they submitted as part of their attempts to secure positions to some of their technical people, right, in North Korea. That is, to me, is very important to understand because at the end of the day, the same tools that the criminals are using, the fraudsters are using, are being used by nation states to engage in similar types of attacks.<\/p>\n Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, we certainly live in an ever growing dangerous world, at least when it comes to these attacks, and we’ll have to respond accordingly. Dr. David Maimon, great to see you. Thanks for joining us.<\/p>\n And we look forward to having you back again on the program very soon.<\/p>\n David Maimon, PhD., Sentilink & Georgia State University<\/strong><\/p>\n Thank you so much for having me, Jeffrey.<\/p>\n #NationState #Financial #Fraud<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses threats to the American financial system by China, Iran, North Korea and Russiawith David Maimon, Phd. of Sentilink and Georgia State University. 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