Technology bites back

This is not a believe-it-or-not section. The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) trumpets about its being fully equipped to get steps ahead of cyber criminals. But to further

strengthen the law enforcement arm of the government, the DICT is currently working closely with the 19th Congress to amend existing laws as additional measures in going after the “evolving faces” of online scammers and fraudsters.

One of which is to curb the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to generate subscriber identification modules, or SIMs, DICT Undersecretary Alexander Ramos announced at our Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum last Wednesday. Ramos admitted  Republic Act (RA) 11934, or the SIM Registration Act, needs to be amended to put teeth to the law on criminal use of generative AI. He revealed thousands of pre-registered SIM cards seized from raided illegal Philippine online gaming operator (POGO) establishments allegedly used for scamming activities were found using AI-generated registrations.

The raids done on suspected online scamming hubs led to the discovery of illegal POGOs that had expired licenses from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (PAGCOR). The biggest ones were those dismantled in Bamban, Tarlac and in Porac, Pampanga and several other suspected smaller POGO fronts around Metro Manila.

The inter-agency raids on the illegal POGO hubs were done by the DICT and PAGCOR, assisted by law enforcement agents from the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC), the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the Philippine National Police (PNP). Found in these “scamming hubs” were boxfuls and boxfuls of pre-registered SIM cards procured during the period before the cut-off period of registration on March 3, 2023 under RA 11934, Ramos cited.

Signed by President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) on Oct. 10, 2022, the deadline set under SIM Registration Act was extended for all telecommunications companies (telcos) to comply with their respective post paid and pre paid mobile phone subscribers. Ramos said the extension of deadline gave these technology-driven criminal minds enough time to illegally collect and gather data and information from Facebook and other social media platforms of random users and edit their photos.

Some of those caught in the raids possessed pre-registered SIM cards and fake identification cards. They admitted during police interrogation having used Facebook and other popular social media platforms to gather individual information – including photos enhanced or tilted using AI and used for SIM registration.

Aided by generative AI, these cyber criminals produced the fake identities used in these pre-registered SIM cards seized from POGO scam hubs.

Thus, one of the proposed amendments to RA 11934, Ramos disclosed, is to disallow bulk buying and setting a limit to the number of SIMs to be registered by a single person. These cyber syndicates were able to go around the present SIM Registration Law designed to regulate the use of SIM cards.

So obviously, this is one of the weaknesses of the present SIM Registration Law that cybercrime syndicates exploited, using generative AI to carry out their modus. With the aid of algorithms, they generated multiple identities in applying for SIMs, Ramos explained.

With the help of Congress, Ramos echoed the hopes of the DICT to strengthen the government’s hand to cut the principal means of online scamming syndicates operating from both local and foreign locations. Ramos is concurrently the head of the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) as the lead implementing government agency created by another law known as the Cyber Crime Prevention Act under RA 10175.

This law signed on Sept.12, 2012 defined and penalized cybercrime cases. Scamming is swindling, or fraudulent schemes aimed at tricking someone for personal gain and is the No.1 cybercrime now in our country, according to the PNP.

At the same Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum, Jocel de Guzman, convenor of Scam Watch Pilipinas, and Gogolook Philippines’ country head Carmela Migrino committed to the DICT-CICC head their respective support in pushing for the needed amendments of the SIM Registration Law. Their resolve was further bolstered by the unraveled modus operandi of raided illegal POGOs found to be fronts for online scamming hubs.

The watchdog group Scam Watch Pilipinas, according to De Guzman, observed these highly skilled but unscrupulous information technology (IT) individuals have used generative AI to be able to reach their target scam victims. Himself an IT expert, De Guzman explained how the modus is being done: “Gumagawa sila ng random cellphone number, tapos lahat ng possible numbers i-generate ng AI. Ang mga scammer padadalhan ng message or tatawagan ang na-generate na number, kapag sinagot ibig sabihin active ang number. Kahit i-block mo, padadalhan ka pa rin ng messages from ibang numbers.”

As an international trust tech company based in Taiwan, Migrino assured the public that Gogolook Ph has been working closely with the CICC and Scam Watch Pilipinas to alert and report “risky” domains or URLs, short for uniform resource locator which is the address of a unique resource on the internet.

Migrino alarmed us with troubling data that they were also able to identify 1,230 URLs categorized “risky” for malware, phishing, smishing and other suspicious sites and possibly online scams.

In fact, Migrino informed us her Gogolook Ph monitored through their Whoscall app that detected 3.9 million scam messages and 414,000 scam calls, as well as 42.2 million spam messages and 6.6 million spam calls in the Philippines in just a one-year period.

The Whoscall app is an application that can profile unknown numbers and identify incoming calls and can distinguish between legitimate contacts and suspicious scam numbers. It also detects malicious links embedded within short message service (SMS) automatically. Migrino urged the public to avail of the Whoscall app which is downloadable for free use. Ramos showed us that he himself has been using the Whoscall app.

Ramos maintained though the SIM Registration Law has been “very efficient,” especially in identifying and going after scammers. He urged the public to report scammers immediately to CICC’s 1326 hotline.

Scamming, like prostitution, is one of the oldest crimes, Ramos wisecracked. While it evolved with technology, thankfully the same technology is biting back at them.