Deepfakes and the War on Truth with Bogdan Botezatu

Summary

StarTalk Radio – "Deepfakes and the War on Truth with Bogdan Botezatu"

Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Guests: Gary O’Reilly, Chuck Nice, Bogdan Botezatu (Director of Threat Research & Reporting, Bitdefender)
Date: October 17, 2025

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Episode Overview

This StarTalk Special Edition delves into the alarming proliferation of scams in the digital era, spotlighting the sinister synergy between artificial intelligence (AI), deepfakes, and cybercrime. Neil deGrasse Tyson, joined by co-hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice, welcomes cybersecurity expert Bogdan (Bob) Botezatu from Bitdefender. Together, they explore the evolving threat landscape, methods scammers use, the psychological underpinnings of deception, and what individuals and society can do to defend themselves in an overwhelmingly digital world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Scale of Scams and Cybercrime

• Historic Perspective:
  • Scams are as old as humanity’s concept of value exchange. Even in bartering societies, trickery existed ([02:58]).
• Modern Scale:
  • Scams now inflict an estimated $1 trillion in global losses annually, according to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance ([06:33]).

    "They place scams at inflicting about $1 trillion of losses for 2024." – Bogdan Botezatu [06:33]

  • Many scams go unreported due to victims’ embarrassment or lack of centralized reporting, implying actual losses may be far higher ([07:12]).
  • The broader cybercrime market is estimated at $9 trillion ([07:35]).

Weapons and Tactics of Scammers

• Communication Channels:
  • Instant messaging and phone calls are preferred for their immersive and urgent nature, pushing victims into fast decisions ([09:03]).
  • Traditional emails and mass media remain in use, but social media and business account compromises are growing in prevalence.
• Attacks Involving Voice:
  • Even silent calls seek to record voice confirmations (“yes,” etc.) to use for authentication fraud or identity theft ([13:06]).
  • AI can now clone voices with just a minute or two of audio footage ([15:18]).

Deepfakes: Influence and Danger

• Nature and Use:
  • Deepfakes impersonate influential public figures to peddle scams, from fake endorsements to bogus investment opportunities ([15:52]).
  • Example: A compromised YouTube account with 28 million subscribers was used to push crypto scams using deepfakes ([17:51]).
• Personal Stories:
  • Chuck Nice shares his own experience being duped by a deepfake of Sam Harris, which led him to buy a product ([18:52]).
  • Neil recounts being deepfaked into a video game endorsement, fooling even friends like Terry Crews ([25:10]).
• Organization of Scams:
  • Scammers now operate like businesses, with divisions for deepfake creation, translation, web development, and even QA ([20:05]).

Demographics, Targeting, and Psychology

• Who’s at Risk?
  • Everyone is a target. Scammers adapt to local vulnerabilities (e.g., SSNs in the US vs. Europe), but some specialized rings focus on specific groups ([22:17]).
  • Male users may be more prone to romance scams; women may fall harder when they do get duped ([23:32]).
• Psychological Manipulation:
  • The majority of scams are about hacking the mind, not technology—exploiting curiosity, loneliness, greed, or urgency ([32:35]):

    "90% of the scams are psychology and probably 10% technology and science. That's because scamming people is actually hacking into their brain." – Bogdan Botezatu [32:35]

Red Flags & Defense Against Deepfakes

• Detecting Deepfakes:
  • Current signs include poor lip-syncing, visual artifacts, and language/cadence mismatches ([29:36]).
  • As AI improves, these technical giveaways will diminish; focus should shift to evaluating the plausibility of the message or context ([29:36], [31:19]).

    "We should rely less on technical artifacts...and focus more on the likelihood that what we're hearing and seeing is real." – Bogdan Botezatu [29:36]

Scamming Jargon Explained

• Pig Butchering:
  • A scam strategy where victims are “fattened up” with trust and emotional manipulation over weeks/months, before losing substantial sums—especially common in romance scams ([37:36]).
• Honeypot:
  • A cybersecurity tool posing as a vulnerable target to attract and study attacks—used to understand criminal tactics and build defense strategies ([42:01]).

The "Dead Internet" Debate

• Are Bots Taking Over?
  • Despite the rise in automation, humans still generate the majority of internet content ([47:21]).
  • Bots are primarily scraping content, not dominating interaction—though future trends could lead to more bot-generated environments ([49:10]).

The Societal Scale: Deepfakes as Weapons of War

• Example:
  • A deepfake of President Zelensky told Ukrainians to surrender, highlighting national security risks and the potential for catastrophic, real-world consequences ([58:49]).

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Practical Advice & Notable Quotes

Rules for Digital Self-defense

• If something seems too good to be true, it probably is ([36:24]).
• Don’t want to believe something so badly that you discard skepticism ([36:24]).
• “Don’t be a dumbass.” ([37:02])
• Be skeptical when public figures behave out of character and be wary if they appear to endorse unusual products ([31:14]).
• Always report scams; unreported attacks enable scammers and prevent authorities from addressing the problem ([65:29]):

  "...if a tree falls into a forest and nobody hears it, has it fallen? That goes with cybercrime as well." – Bogdan Botezatu [67:38]

On Reporting and Stigma

• Anyone can be scammed. The sophistication and scale make even the smartest vulnerable—so reports help authorities understand and fight the problem ([65:29]).

  "It's not something that they should be ashamed of. It's not something that they should keep to themselves. The more they talk about it, the more this message gets pushed on the local agenda..." – Bogdan Botezatu [68:00]

On Technology & Security

• Security is a fundamental part of living in a digital age.
• Antivirus alone isn’t enough today; comprehensive cybersecurity suites (like Bitdefender) defend across devices, data, and networks ([55:11]).
• AI aids both criminals and defenders—cybersecurity is a fast-evolving, perpetual “cat and mouse” game ([63:24]).

  "We've done that for the past decades with malware, and we're going to do that with deepfakes and with the rest of the scams as well. So there's hope." – Bogdan Botezatu [63:24]

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Notable Timestamps & Segments

• Start of statistics and global scope of scamming: [06:33]
• Explaining attack vectors and the psychology of phone scams: [09:03] – [15:18]
• Deepfake prevalence and methods: [15:52] – [18:24]
• Chuck Nice’s personal deepfake scam experience: [18:24] – [20:00]
• Organizational structure of cybercrime: [20:05]
• Deepfakes targeting public reputations: [25:10] – [26:57]
• Practical rules for digital self-defense: [36:24]
• Explanation of "pig butchering" and "honeypot": [37:36] – [43:50]
• AI and human content on the “dead internet”: [47:21] – [49:26]
• Deepfakes in warfare and large-scale infrastructure hacking: [58:49] – [62:50]
• Hope for the future, importance of reporting, collaboration with law enforcement: [63:24] – [68:00]

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Memorable Moments

• On Deepfake Voice Cloning:

  "If I told people 10 years ago that based on a two minute conversation ... somebody will be able to spoof my voice and impersonate me everywhere ... would they have believed me back then?" – Bogdan Botezatu [15:18]

• On Psychological Damage from Romance Scams:

  "People who had lost like hundreds of thousands of dollars were like, you know what? I don't care about the money. I don't have anybody to wake up to and text." – Bogdan Botezatu [41:10]

• On Crime Targeting Everyone:

  "...scamming and malware can happen to everyone ... so sophisticated and so prevalent that it's difficult for everybody to stay safe at all times." – Bogdan Botezatu [65:29]

• On the Future:

  "This will continue to be a cat and mouse game where the bad guys are advancing, the good guys will be catching up with their tactics..." – Bogdan Botezatu [63:24]

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Summary

This episode offers illuminating, sometimes unsettling insights into the reality of scams in the AI-driven age. From deepfakes that threaten public trust to infrastructure vulnerabilities and the psychology of deception, the conversation is packed with real-world examples, practical advice, and a call to remain vigilant. The tone is candid but laced with humor and humanity, befitting the StarTalk brand.

Final Takeaway:
Stay skeptical, report what happens, advocate for digital literacy—and remember, even as AI gets smarter, human awareness, reporting, and community are vital defenses in the digital war on truth.

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For More:

• StarTalk Radio: Official Site
• Bitdefender: Online Security
• Report scams to local law enforcement or through official reporting sites in your country.

Transcript

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[Gary O'Reilly]

Chuck, I didn't know we were going to do a show on the end of the world.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, it's coming, it's coming.

[Gary O'Reilly]

But with the help of, like, AI and cybercrime and deep fakes. And what hath we wrought upon ourselves.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, well, guess what? Frankenstein's monster.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Looking pretty tame. Looking pretty tame.

[Chuck Nice]

Bring back Frankenstein. Frankenstein, baby.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Coming up, an exploration of how we're gonna go to hell in a handbasket on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Special Edition. Today we're going to talk about scams in the age of AI. That it's special edition means we've got Gary O'Reilly. Gary, how you doing, baby?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm good.

[Gary O'Reilly]

All right. Chuck Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

I am Chuck Nice. And not an AI version of Chuck Nice.

[Gary O'Reilly]

AI imitates you better than you faking it.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So, Gary. Yes. This topic is way overdue, for sure. Maybe it's exactly when we need it. Yeah, take us in.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I suppose scams, if you think of it, have been with us since people started to use money.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh. Even before that.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

You can rest assured, before there was a system of currency, somebody was just like, so that's an interesting bushel of.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Wheat you have there.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Barter scam, you know what I mean? As a matter of fact, they're One of. One of our most beloved childhood fairy tales is about a guy who trades the family cow for six magic beans, which. That was supposed to be a scam.

[Gary O'Reilly]

But it turned out it worked out.

[Chuck Nice]

Turned out it worked out for him.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Lucky Jack. Anyway, if you think about it now, right now, it feels like you can't go an hour without a scam. A text, a call. But how big is this problem? Is it just me getting texts and calls, or is this really sort of.

[Chuck Nice]

A. I'm sorry, I'm going to stop sending you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I wish you would.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah, it's all Chuck. But text, phone calls, emails, all of our connectivity into the landscape of humanity, right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And now, as technology advances, how is that aiding, how is that abetting these bad actors? I mean, tech has been supercharged by AI. There's no doubts about that. And it begs the question, what is real? What actually is real out there? Can we believe what we can't believe? And we're going to break down the deep fakes. We're even going to get into the dead Internet theory. And if you don't know what that is, stick around.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, I gotta find out.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You really are going to be in.

[Gary O'Reilly]

For a surprise Internet theory.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And then you'll ask the question, are we all failing daily Turing tests? What happens if it turns out the Internet is all bots? How about that? Some of that. We'll need an expert.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So we've got Bogdan Botezatu. This title is cool. I want this on my business card. Okay. Director of Threat Research and Reporting.

[Chuck Nice]

Why I oughta.

[Gary O'Reilly]

At bitdefender. This a company based in Romania, but they've got offices all they. They want to protect the world.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And we've got them right here on StarTalk Special Edition.

[Chuck Nice]

I believe it was Bitdefender that helped Liam Neeson get his daughter back.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

How do you work Liam Neeson?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Welcome to StarTalk Special Edition.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Hi, all. Thanks for having me on the show. Literally nobody will believe me that I'm shooting a video in such a great company. Probably people at home will say that this is a deep fake and it's going to be very difficult for me to contradict them.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Now, you've told us offline that you'd rather go by Bob.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

It's easier for everybody.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, see that? And look at that. He says it's easier not. Not for him, but for everybody. And by that he means Americans. Americans. That's what he means.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Because we some lazy name people.

[Chuck Nice]

Because people are just, you know. What is your name? Bodan. Bottez Auto. Yeah, I'm gonna call you Bob. You cool with that? You cool with Bob?

[Gary O'Reilly]

We are so bad.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, Bogdan, give us an idea of what it is globally and maybe sort of land in the US a little bit more deeply about the kind of numbers and statistics that we're looking at in the present day as far as scams are concerned.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

It's very hard to put numbers next to the global landscape of scams because most of these scams go under deport or if they go deported. They don't get aggregated globally. Thing is that there are some estimations. GASA places gassa, which is the Global Anti Scam alliance, one of the most prominent organizations that deal with anti scamming. They place scams at inflicting about $1 trillion of losses for 2024. But did you say t. Trillion.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Trillion, yeah.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

$1 trillion.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Yeah. Three years.

[Chuck Nice]

Let me just say I'm in the wrong business. Okay, it's time to start.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I mean, I have now begun to sit uncomfortably and it's not the chair, it's if. If it's a trillion dollars. Are you saying that's the guess or is that that's reported, but most of them go unreported. So that 1 trillion could be an awful lot more.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Probably it's in between. The global cybercrime market is around 9 trillion, which means that $1 billion for just scamming people would be reasonable.

[Chuck Nice]

It's very conservative.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

It is. But the thing is that not all scams get reported. There's people who are ashamed of admitting they have lost huge amounts of money. If you look around and talk to these people who got scammed, you'll realize that they haven't lost like $100 or $500. They have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because these kind of scams run for a very long time. People gain their victims trust and then they proceed to inflict the maximum amount of damage they can. The other thing is that while probably the FBI has stats for what's going on in the United States, there are so many other countries that are affected by scams which do not report centrally what they have registered in each country or each region. So it's very difficult to tell how much money people have lost to scams. But $1 trillion seems an awful lot of money lost.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You think? What are the weapons of choice here for a scammer? I think all of us have experienced some kind of phishing email. But what other weapons are scammers using.

[Gary O'Reilly]

To get at us or tactics as well.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

In terms of attack avenues, hackers have a huge variety. They prefer instant messaging or direct phone calls because they're very immersive. They can apply pressure and that sense of urgency that makes victims comply faster or fall victim easier. Email is a kind of static means of communication. Because you're getting the email, you're reading it through, you're pausing a little bit and then you're like maybe answering this email or healing the call is not a good thing. But when you're woken up at night via instant messaging, hey, this is your bank. Your account is being depleted as we're texting. Please call us back to find a way to block these transactions. Well, you will be likely to respond to that. So we have instant messaging, we have short messaging, we have phone, we have mass communications because there's a type of scams that goes one too many. We have mass advertising and business social media account compromise. I will detail a little bit later about that.

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[Chuck Nice]

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[Bogdan Botezatu]

Our nation has always counted on us to win, to fight for what better could be, to secure our future together. We are marines. We were made for this.

[Chuck Nice]

Hey, this is Kevin the sommelier, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. You're listening to StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What's with the phone call? What? You get it, you pick it up and there's silence on the end because that. That kind of.

[Chuck Nice]

Everybody knows that one. Yeah, yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So what's the angle there?

[Bogdan Botezatu]

I have two theories. One is technical and one is a little bit of a scenario that if true, we're completely condemned. I started with the first one. One likely chance of these phone calls is technical glitches. You know, scammers use very complex software to spoof their numbers. They use voice over IP gateways to make it look like they're calling from the same country as you, and so on. So there's a lot of room for failure when involving this kind of call center grade software. Sometimes calls hang up, there's glitches that put the speaker, the operator on pause, and so on. So probably there's a technical error that prevents the cyber criminal from getting in touch with you. The other one is, well, I say a superstition of mine. How do you answer your phone? With hello? Yes, maybe.

[Chuck Nice]

No, I answered like this.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Who is this?

[Chuck Nice]

Sorry, go ahead.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Okay, fair enough. Because some people in some geographies, for instance, they will answer with not hello, but yes. Most of Europe has yes as an opening line when you're getting called. What happens if somebody is building a massive database of words, of yes, of a acknowledgements, of confirmations, like if I'm answering my phone and somebody records me saying yes to them, where can they play that back to bypass some sort of authentication or confirm a choice of mine? Well, voice is biometrics, right? And sometimes Saying yes to something becomes contractual, like it substitutes your signature. What if somebody, a threat actor or a threat actor group might ask for confirmations from people?

[Chuck Nice]

No, that makes sense. So what they're doing is they're capturing your voice.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

If I told people 10 years ago that based on a two minute conversation that we had on phone, somebody will be able to spoof my voice and impersonate me everywhere for tens of minutes or hours, would they have believed me back then?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, Bogdan, looking at that aspect of it, if you've got new technologies, which we know are evolving rapidly, if not quicker, how do we get into deepfakes? How prevalent is the deepfake scam now on the landscape?

[Bogdan Botezatu]

They're very prevalent and they are making most of the victims. I was telling you that I'm clustering scams on a one on one type and on one on many type of one on one scams are those that happen in instant messaging where you're getting approached by a stranger and they try to earn your trust and then they will guide you towards some type of scam. There's a one to many type of scam communication that is massively aided by deepfakes. Cybercriminals are building deepfakes with people that the world recognizes and trusts. Like you folks, right? You are online influencers. Cybercriminals have a lot of footage with you that they can use to train algorithms. And people tend to listen to you because that's what they do with key influencers. There's also politicians, doctors who are very famous, and they become the base of deepfakes. With these deepfakes, cybercriminals start promoting all types of scams from medical supplements to huge crypto investments. You know, you name it it, they have an opportunity for everything. And these deep fakes get broadcast either on stolen YouTube accounts or on social media posts that are boosted by paying for advertisements. They use the trust given by the figure that has been impersonated and they are using large channels to reach huge audiences. And from there on, of course, some people will fall victim to the scam. They will heed the call to action, which is normally visit this page or call this number and sign up for this opportunity. So this is how deepfakes work. We took a look at what's going on now and we see that there are tens of thousands of such ads running on social networks. There are large YouTube accounts that had been compromised and used as the billboard for crypto scams. One of the largest accounts that has been compromised had 28 million subscribers. So when hackers got a hold of that account, they were able to broadcast the deep fake to 28 million potential victims. That's more than Romania has population. Wow.

[Chuck Nice]

So can I. Let me know. Yeah, if, If I can. If you can indulge me, I'm gonna. I want to tell you that when I fell for a deep fake, I actually fell for one. And I'm embarrassed as hell, but it was very sophisticated. So.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Which you have to say because you fell for it, why you got to hurt a brother?

[Chuck Nice]

Hurt a brother?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Did I set your lawn on fire? I'm just saying.

[Chuck Nice]

Damn.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You can't say this was a simple deep fake.

[Chuck Nice]

I'll let you. I'll let you be the judge of whether or not it was sophisticated.

[Gary O'Reilly]

All right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so here's the deal. There was a deep fake of Sam Harris, who happens to be somebody I respect. Okay. How they knew that, I don't know, but it came into my feed and he was touting a very specific kind of product. Not a brand, nothing, just a kind of product. Okay. Yeah, So I looked it up and of course they have, you know, they have your search history and all that kind of stuff, right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

So then I received a very specific ad for the product. Okay, so deep fake, right? I respond with just a search and then the search responds back to me with more information. And then over the course of, like this back and forth amplification, I bought.

[Gary O'Reilly]

The product, you dumbass.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so what you just heard described there.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, I knew he was going to do it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Lacking some empathy, Neil?

[Gary O'Reilly]

I'm sorry, not from this man here.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Is that a common template that you're seeing with a deep fake?

[Bogdan Botezatu]

This is AI going full circle. So the AI is building the billboard that will sell to you. The AI algorithms on social networks will know how to profile you and what ad to serve you for maximum efficiency. And then from there on, you will be chased by ads all pointing to the same product until you're ready to shop. So cybercriminals work most of the time like corporations. So they have their own product division that builds the deepfake. They have the translation division that builds the multi language content. They have the web dev team that keeps the servers running for the scam pages to reach you. And they will have quality assurance and sales support. You mentioned before that we partner with law enforcement. Yes, that's something that we normally do on high profile cases and scams are some part of these law enforcement corporations. What we learned about is that these cybercrime businesses have call centers that take people's calls and sign them up for various stuff. People employed in these call centers are screwed, screened before employment with lie detectors to make sure that they're not undercover cops, to make sure that they will not betray the call center's cause, and so on. So this is Cyber Crime Incorporated. It's not a scam business ran out of the somebody's basement. It's business that cybercriminals have invested money in order to make more money. Wow.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I mean, that's infrastructure. Is there a specific demographic that these organized scammers are looking at? Is it agenda based? Is it an age group? Is, is it geographical? Is what, what is. What is it? Or is it just, you know what, we'll take anyone's money, we don't care.

[Chuck Nice]

Is it black comedian who co hosts podcast? I hear that's a very popular demo with the scammers.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

No. In the end, everybody's welcome to put their money on the table and leave it there. That's perfectly fine with cybercriminals, but they have various approaches because they don't have a scamming syndicate yet. Right. They're not unionized in a way that would allow them to organize in order to target demographics. Right. So what they will do is find out a local scam that converts. Well, that depends where you are. Right. In some places of the world, for instance, leaking out your Social Security number is huge. Right. And will bring you a lot of hurt in the foreseeable future. In Europe, for instance, some parts of Europe, leaking out your Social Security number doesn't have any value. It's pseudo public, actually. So cybercriminals are looking for information or types of scams that convert well in the region. They don't target demographics, but they are focusing on specific aspects. Some of them are focused on no man scams. For instance, they will target men more than women because it looks like men.

[Chuck Nice]

Are much more horny and desperate and lonely.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

No care less when it comes to sharing information with partners. Right. Women are a little bit more reserved. They don't go as fast and as far as the male population, but they still, when they fall for the scam, they fall the hardest. To answer your question, I wouldn't say that cybercriminals are targeting demographics, but rather that there are specialized cybercrime groups that prefer one type of scam over another. And us getting targeted by so many scam groups on a daily basis would look like there's something very structured. That's the Same organization targeting different demographics with different tactics, while it was about us getting targeted by multiple cybercrime rings at the same time.

[Chuck Nice]

So business is good. That's basically what you're saying?

[Gary O'Reilly]

No, but we're in a different space there. Because people would not necessarily do a deep fake to extort who and what we are, but they can deep fake our integrity, our name, our authenticity. And there's one case where someone just scripted this narration about the Big bang. It was like 85% correct. And I got fully deep faked into being the narrator, the person speaking those words, showing me in a podcast setting. And it went online and it got boatloads of views.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, there's your money.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Well, I guess.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so there's the incentive. Okay.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Advertising card, even a good friend of mine, Terry Crews, who is himself an actor and a public figure, he texted me and said, neil, this is great. This is great what you did here. And I said, what? And I looked at it. I said, that's not me. That's not me. And a funny thing, I don't want to say this publicly, but maybe I could or should or would it matter? When I speak, my words have way more rhythm to them than that Deepfake did. I'm just saying I know me when I'm speaking. And when somebody's not me speaking, even if they're using my word, I know it ain't me. Anyhow, it fooled him. And so this also, the deep fake.

[Chuck Nice]

Sounded like it was on helium.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You know, when you look out into.

[Gary O'Reilly]

The universe, it was missing some of the timbre of the lower registers of my voice. So my only point there is. So, yeah, 15% of it was either misleading or wrong. And there have been others where just as Chuck was duped by a deep fake of Sam Harris, there was a deep fake of me commenting on a video game release. And people thought it was real, and it was almost comical, but it was.

[Chuck Nice]

So this is Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I, too, like sitting in my mother's basement.

[Gary O'Reilly]

As I'm playing this video game right now. Right. So what is. What do we do? What do we call you? The companies like you, what happens? And are we a lower priority because. No, they're not draining our bank account yet. Where do we fit in that spectrum?

[Bogdan Botezatu]

My guess is that what you described is a crime that has two distinct victims. The first one is you, because you have just become an unwitting accessory to a bigger scheme that was shown to a potential public. Your reputation is a damage here, and that. That somehow can Be controlled because you have the leverage to report that video to the hosting platform and probably take it off. But you have still presented some information. You. That version of you has presented some, maybe misaligned information to your potential audience. And that's how deepfakes normally run. Cybercriminals pick up a very prominent figure like a president, a bank governor, a medic, and then they place a discourse on top of the video. They will attempt to convince people that what that person is saying is true. Right. The people will flock to heed the call to action and probably will lose money. So for some people, there is the reputational damage. That's you. The persons that get impersonated, for some other people is the financial loss that they have caused themselves when they heeded your call. No, you don't call bitdefender for that. You call the platform and have the video removed. You use your outreach to tell the people that you're being impersonated. And they shouldn't. They should do their due diligence. And you also might want to educate the users, which we're actually doing right now. We're talking about deepfakes. We're talking about the possibility that everybody can create an online version of us with different hidden agenda. And I think that this educational part is the most important.

[Chuck Nice]

Speaking of education, are there telltale signs that you're looking at a deep fake or hearing a deep fake? Now, Neil said that the cadence of his speech was kind of a giveaway to him when he saw it. But are there things that we can, as laypeople, look at in a deep fake and say, oh, if I see this, this, and this, most likely or definitely this is a deep fake.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And you tell that to the deepfake, and next time it doesn't do that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We'Re in a losing game.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, we are. But are there right now that we know of?

[Bogdan Botezatu]

I would say yes and no. For starters, there are a couple of telltale signs, like maybe poor lip synchronization or some sort of artifacts introduced by the AI. If you remember a while ago, the AI used to have a very difficult time aligning teeth or representing the amount of fingers. But that changes in time, that as technology evolves, these things get perfected. And what I'm trying to say is that we should rely less on technical artifacts or tell the science to tell a scam and focus more on the likelihood that what we're hearing and seeing is real. I saw the impersonating videos that Neil sent over, and when we analyzed them, we focused on say, a couple of key elements that will demolish the story. Like Neil. Neil is a very knowledgeable person in the science field. He wouldn't spend much time commenting games. Right. He wouldn't use that language. He wouldn't be recommending products. He would not do that. Probably we are going to need that. The upcoming versions of our technologies for fighting scams to include deep knowledge about public people or the most prominent people in the world that are likely to fall victims of impersonation and create some sort of a. What would that person do? Recommend speak about, discuss publicly and so on.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Very, very important fact. Because that video game review, it had a lot of vulgarity in it.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And I'm not a vulgar guy. I'm not that guy. Plus I don't.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, you never sell anything either.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I don't sell anything. Right, right.

[Chuck Nice]

So if you ever see like, hi, this is Neil Degrasse Tyson for delicious Buffy Bison beef jerky. You know, it's not real, it's just not real.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah. There's even pressure for me to sell things for the, the ad spots of this podcast. I don't do that. Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Gary and I are the whores that do that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You're welcome. Neil.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You'Re protecting my.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Thank you.

[Chuck Nice]

Dave is our pimp. We out here on these streets, that.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Opens up a lot of opportunities because whenever you're misbehaving or do reckless things, you can say just, you know, it's an impersonation. I'm not doing that normally.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, Bogdan, we've seen and you've explained it brilliantly. Thank you. About the development and use of technologies to bring forward different levels, different types of of scams and deep fakes. How much of this is pre planned psychological attack on victims? And how are scammers building in a psychological aspect to this?

[Bogdan Botezatu]

My theory is that 90% of the scams are psychology and probably 10% technology and science. That's because scamming people is actually hacking into their brain. Right. Pushing some buttons that generate emotions. Every type of scam that we have analyzed has some sort of psychological cues that cybercriminals want to pick up. Let's take failed package deliveries. You become curious about where did the package come from and what might be in it. That's enough for your brain to switch off the rattling sound that says, hey, probably what that link you're going to follow will lead you to a phishing page. Right. The brain no longer listens to these warning signs. You have romance camps where cybercriminals are Exploiting and preying on the lonely. They don't target people who are using technology. They are targeting people who are feeling lonely. And they are feeling so lonely that they will be willing to spend all the day talking to a stranger who inadvertently sent a message because they misspelled a phone number. We have cybercriminals that prey on the natural, natural greed that people feel like, get rich quick now, would you like to multiply your money ten times? There again, they're not trying to demonstrate an economic impossibility. They will try to push that button that says, hey, I need more money, because that's the human nature. So probably most of the scams that we face on a daily basis are psychology. And technology just widens the net, makes cybercriminals more effective, makes them capable of targeting people who are in a different geographic region, speaking a different language. A couple of days ago, I got texted by a scammer on an instant messaging platform and they wrote the message in Romania. And I do what I usually do, answer in Finnish. Finnish is a very niche language. There's like what, 4 million people speaking an almost impossible language that it's very difficult to understand. And that's, you know, that's my tuning test. If you're able to reply me in Finnish. And guess what they did? They removed the first message and replied in Finnish and they carried the conversation for a couple of messages. Sometimes they would revert back to Romanian, delete the message and then replace it with the Finnish translation. And they would do that in almost real time. So what I'm trying to say here is that technology is an enabler for them. They are using the same psychological patterns that I talked about, but now they're able to cast a wider net because they have APIs to mass mail, mass communicate with people. They have real time translation to help them address markets that were impossible for them. And they have huge opportunities on the payment scale because credit cards are universal. And if credit cards don't do the trick, then probably you're going to have to exchange real money into bitcoins or cryptocurrencies.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And API stands for what? Remind me.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

It's Advanced Programming Interface. It's a way that you can hook up, let's say an instant messaging application to a computer to mass communicate with dozens, thousands of people at the same time. Wow.

[Chuck Nice]

So I think it's, you know, I may sound cliche when I say this, but this is what I was taught my entire life, that one, you don't get something for nothing to. If it's too good to be true, then it's not. And three, and this is the part that's very hard. Don't ever want to believe something more than you want the truth. Because if you want to believe something, you will discard everything to get to your to see your belief confirmed.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You left out a fourth one.

[Chuck Nice]

What's that?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Don't be a dumbass.

[Chuck Nice]

That's my rule. Those were my parents rules.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I mean, none so blind as those who refuse to see is kind of like another right way of rephrasing that. And talking of phraseology, I think we just us three here have learned recently some scamming language. Firstly, if and I could, I'll ask you to break them down. One is honey pot, the other is pig butchering. So which one?

[Chuck Nice]

Well, one sounds pretty good. Yeah, and it ain't the honey pot.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So Bogdan, could you break down each. Each phrase for us so we understand and gives our audience an understanding as well.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

I like the way you have split them into adversary language and good guys language. I'll start with big butchering. This is a type of scam that has been going on for quite a while. It's very popular in Southeast Asia. That's where it got its name from because it technically means fattening up the pig before you sacrifice it. And that's what cybercriminals are doing to the victims. They gain their trust. They keep conversations going on for weeks, maybe months, trying to gain their trust and get as close to them as possible. And when they earn their trust, they're going to create massive financial losses because they already have that person's trust. A very common pig butchering type of attack is somebody texting you normally with an, with an opposite sex handle. Like if you're a man, they will impersonate a woman and they will be asking you, hey, this is Jennifer. How far away are you from the airport? Because I'm kind of losing patience here. You were supposed to pick me up at 10. And you look at the phone and answer, hey, you have the wrong number. Probably you want to sort it out with your taxi cab, Uber driver, whatever. They will reply, hey, thank you for being so kind. By the way, I'm visiting the city. I want to see what your city offers. Do you have any recommendations? And they kick off a conversation and they will entertain that conversation with the victim for months. They will exchange photos that are created with deep fake technology. They will create videos. They will gain your trust up until some point where they start working at the con. Hey, Look, I'm doing just fine. I have invested in cryptocurrency a while ago, and now I'm reaping the rewards. We've been meeting online for quite a while, so I'll tell you my secret. Let me teach you how to invest a little bit of money, to multiply it 10 times, 12, 20 times, and so on. And they will start working on this financial fraud when you have finally fallen in love with them. I've been talking to people who have lost significant amounts of money.

[Gary O'Reilly]

They have yet to meet these people. They fall in love via electrons.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Yes. And, you know, emotion is emotion, regardless of the vector, so. Reminds me of that joke, why is love on the wireless spectrum? Because it's measured in hertz.

[Chuck Nice]

Look at that.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Good one.

[Chuck Nice]

I'll be here all week.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

So people fall in love and they're looking forward to meeting the other one, but it's. It's never a good opportunity for that because of travel, because of all these things, and eventually people end up losing a lot of money. We've been investigating a couple of these scams, and the sad thing was that people who had lost like hundreds of thousands of dollars were like, you know what? I don't care about the money. I don't have anybody to wake up to and text.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Whoa.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

That is, that's, that's. The psychological damage is some sometimes much more impactful for them than the financial damage.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow. Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, all right, wait.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So this sets up the plot for the movie her where just let the AI be your companion, fall in love with AI and the AI is not going to try to take your money.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

ChatGPT. I don't think it wants to take your money, but it'll totally make you think you're in love with it if you ask it the right questions.

[Chuck Nice]

That's true.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So we have solutions for this.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

I have a very limited movie culture, but my assumption is that that movie didn't end well.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You may be right. So we've done pig butchering. Can you just open up the honeypot for us? Let us see.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Inside the honeypot, we have a couple of technologies that we call honeypot. It's something that, that researchers normally do. That's a computer or a connected system that poses like it's a victim. A honeypot is used by cybersecurity researchers to attract cybercriminals. And they will attempt to hack into that machine, thinking that it's a real user. On the Internet, it's somebody's computer. And they will attempt to exercise the prowess to hack into that. And the machine, instead of just letting it through, it records every step of the attack. For us to be able to decompose the way cybercriminals got in, that brings a lot of value for us because it helps us understand how the criminals are operating on the Internet, what tactics and tools they're using, how they're approaching this puzzle of hacking into somebody's computer. And what are the telltale signs that we can use in an early stage of the attack to block them. We use honeypots for various things, for collecting virus samples, for instance. We use honeypots for IoT devices to see how cybercriminals are harvesting IoT devices and building large armies of zombie devices that they're using them to attack civilian targets. We are using honeypots for recording scam conversations and extracting red flags in that conversation that will help the victim identify when they're being scammed. So that's very short definition of the honeypot.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So honeypot is the good guys tools.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Yes. A honeypot is normally somebody's tool way of staying up to date with the latest tactics in the hacking world.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Okay, so I'm glad that exists.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You've just described the honeypot and the pit bulk trainers. Thank you. And now you've kind of closed off both ends. Is anything out there real? I mean, most of this thing happens on the Internet. And I'm just wondering now, is anything actually real out there?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Real? Human? You mean, is it human?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I mean, we know the victims themselves are generally humans, and there's very rarely a victimless scam. But is anything real? Just really, honestly, anything real out there yet?

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Pretty much everything is real because we're starting to use the Internet. We have started to use the Internet for real stuff a while ago. Nuclear power plants are being controlled over the Internet. The world money flows through the Internet from one bank to another. Our communications flow from one end of the Internet to another. Our dreams, our fantasies, everything is on the Internet. So that's where the bad guys are lurking, right? My guess is that your question is like, are we still more humans on the Internet than probably bots or scripts or automations or artificial intelligence algorithms that are building content? Yes, there are way more people on the Internet than bots.

[Gary O'Reilly]

That's what the bots want you to.

[Chuck Nice]

Think.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Look, if you take a look at what's happening on social media, there is a lot of video being created by humans. Is it useful? Definitely not. Right? People dancing all over or sharing that experience is really not useful for the largest part of humankind. But it's still video created by people. They have put effort in doing that. Yes. There's much more content being created by humans at this point than by AI. AI and bots are. Bots mostly are being used for scraping this content. Content that will be eventually used for training artificial intelligence algorithms.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You don't really see right now a dead Internet theory being the reality. You still think the human presence is there. Is it likely the future of the Internet will be exactly that? And it's going to be 100% bot.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

There's going to be a lot of automation, but most of those consuming the content will still be human. So regardless of how much content is being produced, there's still going to be people on the Internet consuming that content.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Okay. I don't mind being a person on the Internet being entertained by AI created content, as long as I'm not fooled into thinking it's anything other than that. In the film Blade Runner, based on the story by Philip K. Dick, do androids dream of electric sheep? Yeah, that's the original short story. Yeah, it's a great title. In it, there's a whole system in place where there are people trained to test the replicants to see if they're actually replicants. Because they're so well made, they have to put them through a psychological stress test where you know how a human would react, whereas the replicants, the AI computer versions of us, would not, and they would fail. And the fact that that test was so subtle and this story was written 50 years ago, so is there any way today that we mentioned this earlier, but I'm just saying, in a Turing test, if you're gonna have a conversation, are there questions we can ask? Is there something about the video we can detect? Is this. Other than my voice cadence and other things that I know about myself, how do we defend ourselves? Your company's called Bitdefender, so let me hear the defensive line.

[Chuck Nice]

Help me, Bitdefender.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Help me. The AI and deepfake front is opened relatively recently. We didn't have it five years ago, we didn't have it 10 years ago. You know, most of our defenses as humanity revolve around staying safe from phishing links, from malware, from what I would tell traditional endpoint security data, when it comes to Artificial intelligence and AI generated content. It's already here. We have, like, a couple of dozens of very famous online influencers that are ran by artificial intelligence. Like, there are a couple of Instagram accounts that have millions of subscribers, and the person does not exist. The only thing that exists is an AI algorithm that's building content to order. Well, unfortunately, there is no defense against that. And would we need a defense to that, or would we need a defense to probably some nefarious goals that the AI content will attempt to lead us to. And here's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to help people understand the red flags in communication, understand this information, understand the likelihood of something that they're exposed to being real. And probably that will be the future of technology. Not necessarily detecting that some content is created by AI, but rather the fact that that content created by whoever is malicious and will have an impact on you and your security.

[Chuck Nice]

So when it comes to malicious intent on behalf of interactions, Internet interactions, are there some hard and fast simple rules that we can follow? Like the way you answer an email or the way you answer if someone were to call you? The way you do or do not offer up information? Are there some simple rules that will help somebody not fall prey to a scam?

[Bogdan Botezatu]

You're asking all the hard questions. This is a very important topic for me because these nefarious interactions that you described can be used by a commercial actor, for instance, to, I don't know, make you behave in a specific way that will result in loss of money, but they're also used as hybrid warfare. Now, disinformation is a big part of that, and it doesn't have that kind of structure that makes it obvious. It doesn't have that call to action that would let me know that the message is wrong, false, or leading to unintended consequences. The fact that we have deepfakes talking about, I would say, political stuff, impersonations, hidden agendas, and so on will help an adversary dilute our amount of trust. They will cause uncertainty. They will reach their goal by making us question everything and ultimately not caring about the message because we cannot distinguish what's wrong from the right, what's true from the false, and so on. So not. Not sure if this answers the question, but that's probably the best answer I can give at this point.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, well, how about this? And what does bitdefender do? Like, you know, how do you guys defend against this stuff? If I were to have bitdefender on my computer, what would it do for me?

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

If all you do is find it at plus is it prosecution at the end of this? What fraction of all offenders are prosecuted? Because apparently with a $9 trillion fraud.

[Chuck Nice]

Market ain't a lot.

[Gary O'Reilly]

It can't be a lot.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, but that's what I'm saying. Like that right there lets you know that this is ubiquitous and it's proliferating. So like, it sounds to me like when you call yourself Bitdefender, maybe there's a real need for you to be on my computer, but what am I putting you on my computer to do is what I'm trying to figure out. And I'm not trying to do a commercial here. I am genuinely interested.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Cybersecurity is a fundamental part of the way we're interacting with technology right now. I don't want to ring my bells here, but security solutions are fundamental to how our end or our day starts and ends. And they make the difference between another day at the office and a complete disaster when you have lost all your money or your data at the end of the day. So what does Bitdefender do? We build cybersecurity solutions and technologies that help people stay safe from all sorts of cyber threats. We started with what's commonly known as antivirus back in the 90s when the Internet was booming. And when computers became a fundamental part of every household, we started securing them with what's called as antivirus.

[Gary O'Reilly]

The good old days, it was just a virus.

[Chuck Nice]

Just a virus?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Just a virus. The good old days. Yeah.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

We evolved way past that because our attack surface has become a little bit more complex. And now we have to secure not only computers, but our data, our smart devices in households. We have to secure companies that store your information. We have to secure a lot of aspects that were not an issue back in the day. So when you hear that the antivirus is dead or there's no real need for it on computers and mobile devices, that's not true. Right. Antivirus solutions are becoming more and more complex. They have changed to complete suits. Now they're not just one application.

[Chuck Nice]

The virus is mutating, Mr. Smith.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

No, but it's not just the virus. Scams have become an important component of cybercrime. As I told you, it's 1/9 of the total losses caused by technology in the world. So at this point, Bitdefender also handles these anti scamming aspect in various ways. We have security solutions that automatically detect that a specific message is a form of scam. We have advisors where people can describe what they're seeing or taking screenshots or taking a picture of something and feeding it to an AI assistant asking, hey, is there anything dangerous here? If I'm venturing into what's described here and the AI will look at the situation, assess the likelihood of that being a scam, and teach the user that there are a couple of red flags there that probably lead to a scap. So BitDefender, what we do is what we've always done, keep users and companies safe, but now with a lot more technology and attack surface to defend.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, okay, we've talked about, by the.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Way, I like your geometric reference to the texture of your surface that's exposed. A surface is a boundary between what's on one side and what's on the other side and the surface can get larger or more variegated. So I love that reference and how you have to then think about the problem.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Bolt down.

[Gary O'Reilly]

We've discussed what you don't want is a fractal surface, then you'll never get to the bottom of it.

[Chuck Nice]

They'll never get to it, never get to the end of it, ever.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We've discussed the sort of one to one aspect. What if you rolled out the sort of deep fake and malicious intents to a grander scale to a city, a utility, on a national scale?

[Gary O'Reilly]

National security.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

You know that Romania is on the eastern NATO flank. It's on the eastern part of the European Union as well. And as of a couple of years ago, we've had a war at the border. There's Ukraine versus Russia. Ukrainians are our neighbors. And as they were in the middle of the fight, tip fake of President Zelensky erupted on the Internet, calling for every armed person to lay down their weapon because Ukraine had surrendered. That was a deep fake and it was quickly combated by Ukrainian security services. But this could have had awful consequences, right? What happened if the whole army fell for that or a part of the army fell for that? But that's also part of the hybrid, hybrid warfare that I was mentioning before that there's a lot of disinformation going on, there are calls to action that are completely wrong and so on. But another practical example would not necessarily have to do with deepfakes, but to the state of technology and the penetration of technology into our homes. Bitdefender also has an IoT security research wing. IoT stands for the Internet of Things. And it's normally a category of consumer electronics that's comprised of smart stuff, digital assistants, coffee maker, smart toasters, coffee makers and Smart lights and so on. There's a specific type of IoT device that has started to penetrate the world, and that's the solar inverter. Solar inverters are pieces of technology that convert electricity from solar panels and store it, manage it, or inject it into the grid. Right. These inverters are normally hooked up to the Internet at home, and these inverters most of the time come from China. Last year in August, we looked into a couple of inverters that are very popular in Europe, and we realized that a potential attacker would be able to seize control over each of the inverters made by a specific brand. That would give an attacker access to about 140 gigawatts of electricity. That's a lot by any standard. I'm not a professional in the energy, but that looks huge.

[Chuck Nice]

That's a big blackout, man.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

And one of the things that we uncovered after this first contact was that we will never know whether that was a software bug that allowed somebody to get into all of the inverters made by the same manufacturer, or if that was a carefully hidden backdoor that could be accessed by a nation, rival nation state to cause a blackout to a city, country, or to territory. Germany is an European state that's starting to take cybersecurity in this inverter space very carefully because they realized that whatever happens in this very particular IoT sphere could bring Greens down. What happened in Spain this year was a wake up call. That's greed falling, not because of a cybersecurity incident, but because solar played a bad role here. All I wanted to say is that grids are very powerful beasts and they used to be isolated from the Internet. And now everybody has a piece of the grid in their home that's connected to the Internet. That's a million entry points to something that pertains to national security.

[Chuck Nice]

That's why we got to stick to coal. Gotta keep burning coal, man. That's the problem. Get off that doggone solar energy.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, newfangled solar and wind. What about the birds and the cancer? No, let's go with cold and you'll be okay.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Thank you, Chuck, for that regressive comment on civilization. Bodan, we gotta wrap this up. Could you give us just some, some hopeful news here out of this conversation?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, man. Where do you see all this?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah. Where does this go in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years?

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Well, this will continue to be a cat and mouse game where the bad guys are advancing, the good guys will be catching up with their tactics, and best case, scenario, they will find a way to proactively protect against their attacks. Right. We've done that for the past decades with malware, and we're going to do that with deepfakes and with the rest of the scams as well. So there's hope. The fact that. That we're still using technology and most of our interactions online are safe gives us hope. We're here to protect. We have the technologies, the solutions, and we're not just waiting for the bad guys to win the game. Right.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Given how large this marketplace is, you're not the only company out there who is working in this space.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

We have very powerful partners, from other security vendors to law enforcement. And that. That's also one thing that I wanted to tell you about. The fact that we're very successful in this cooperation with law enforcement. We have a lot of cases that we opened together with law enforcement. We have a couple of cybercrime rings that become dismantled as part of these successful cooperations. And police agencies all over the world are taking cybercrime extremely seriously with our expertise and with their ability to execute arrests. Is something that helps us curb on.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Cybercrime the ability to kick down a door. Yeah, that's what that is.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. AI can't do that.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So Bodah. If a person is famous or otherwise wealthy and then they get scammed, that's kind of embarrassing. Is there some stigma that will go away eventually once people find out that they're not alone in their victimhood? Where does that land on the. On this landscape?

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Well, scamming and malware can happen to everyone. That's because cyber attacks have become so sophisticated and so prevalent that it's difficult for everybody to stay safe at all times. I will give you an example. Cybercrime can happen to everyone. It's not you that you're enabling it. You're just a victim yourself. Right. There have been a lot of compromised accounts belonging to highly respected people that have fallen victim to a cyber attack. We have a lot of surface to defend at the end of the day. We have email communications. We have mobiles and instant messaging. We have technology everywhere around us, on our body, in our home, in front of us. Right. And that's a very, very difficult mission. Staying safe is a difficult mission. What I would say is that if you're falling victim to any kind of digital crime, report it. First of all, there's entities there that might be able to help. There's also entities that need to know that you have fallen victim to a type of cybercrime. To be able to assess the magnitude of a phenomenon. Imagine that, for instance, only about 7% of scams are getting reported. So police offices all over the world are not correctly budgeted to face this phenomenon because they cannot assess its impact on the local communities.

[Chuck Nice]

So, Bob, in a way, what you're saying is you should report it, because if you don't, you're actually enabling the people who harmed you. You're actually helping them by keeping this to yourself and suffering in silence. Go ahead and report it. Because, one, it happens to everybody and it's not your fault, and two, by reporting it, you're putting information out there that can be used against the people who committed the crime.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Yes. They say that, you know, if a tree falls into a forest and nobody hears it, has it fallen? That's that. That goes with cybercrime as well. If you have been scammed and dozens of other people have been scammed and you have not reported it to the local law enforcement office, and neither did anybody. Is scamming really part of the police agency's agenda? No, because there's technically no scamming going on. That's why we are advising victims to report it. It's not something that they should be ashamed of. It's not something that they should keep it to themselves. The more they talk about it, the more this message gets pushed on the local agenda, and law enforcement agencies or other people will be able to act on it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Cool.

[Gary O'Reilly]

That's the lesson right here.

[Chuck Nice]

There it is.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Bogdan Botizatu. Pleasure to have you on StarTalk Special Edition.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Thank you.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Even though three quarters of everything you said was completely depressing, we needed that.

[Chuck Nice]

It was the best depressing conversation.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I guess so. That's another way to say it. Okay. All right. It's the kind of depressing information that can serve you going forward.

[Chuck Nice]

Absolutely.

[Gary O'Reilly]

There it is. There it is.

[Chuck Nice]

So important.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And we were delighted to work with you guys when we filmed our segment with Formula One. And the security necessary in the communication between the pits. The pit and the cars and that whole world. And so that. Thanks for being there both times.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Thank you for this opportunity. It's one thing to look at you religiously on the other side of the screen and a whole different experience to be part of the show.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Okay, thank you.

[Chuck Nice]

That's very nice.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Excellent. All right. That's all the time we got.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Learned a lot today.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh, yes. Yeah, I do.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. I'm. I've learned. I am burning my computer.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

That's what I learned going back to an Abacus.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

Abacus.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I got one right. I got abacus, right.

[Chuck Nice]

I'm writing letters. I'm starting to. I'm writing letters again. I know.

[Gary O'Reilly]

All right, Gary. It was good to have you here. All right, Chuck. Always be good. Neil DeGrasse Tyson for StarTalk Special Edition. The world is coming to an end. AI will be our overlords and they'll take your money. No, I exaggerate. Anyhow, really try to keep looking up. Until next time.

[Bogdan Botezatu]

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