Ethical Hacking News
Lithuania is at the forefront of a global effort to combat AI-driven cyber fraud, with a national initiative aimed at strengthening the country's e-security and digital resilience. The initiative, known as "Safe and Inclusive E-Society," involves collaboration between universities, companies, and policymakers to develop innovative solutions to protect citizens from emerging threats.
Lithuania has launched a national initiative, "Safe and Inclusive E-Society," to strengthen its e-security and digital resilience. The initiative, valued at €24.1 million, focuses on increasing cyber resilience and reducing personal data breaches. The mission covers various aspects of cybersecurity challenges, including AI-driven defense systems, threat-detection sensors, and hybrid threat management systems. Lithuania is working to combat disinformation through AI models that detect coordinated bot and troll activity. Researchers are developing intelligent platforms for automated cyber threat intelligence and real-time analysis. The emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has changed the logic of fraud against e-government services, making traditional defenses ineffective. Criminals now have access to a broad arsenal of AI tools, including GPT-4, GPT-5, and other models designed for malicious activities. These tools are used to create photorealistic face photos, deepfake videos, and document copies with edited metadata. The initiative aims to develop innovative solutions to protect citizens from emerging threats such as adaptive AI-driven social engineering.
Lithuania, a small country in Eastern Europe, has taken a significant step towards addressing the growing threat of AI-driven cyber fraud. The country's government-funded national initiative, known as "Safe and Inclusive E-Society," aims to strengthen the nation's e-security and digital resilience by leveraging innovation and collaboration.
At the heart of this initiative is the Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), which has been coordinating a consortium of top Lithuanian universities, cybersecurity companies, and industry associations. The mission, valued at €24.1 million, focuses on increasing cyber resilience and reducing the risks of personal data breaches.
The scope of the mission is broad, covering various aspects of cybersecurity challenges that define today's digital landscape. Teams are working on developing smart, adaptive, and self-learning buildings, new AI-driven defense systems for FinTech companies, threat-detection sensors for critical infrastructure, hybrid threat management systems for public safety, education, and business environments.
One of the key areas of focus is combating disinformation through AI models that automatically detect coordinated bot and troll activity. Additionally, researchers are working on creating intelligent platforms for automated cyber threat intelligence and real-time analysis.
The emergence of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) has fundamentally changed the logic of fraud against e-government services. According to Dr. Rasa Brūzgienė, Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Sciences at KTU, GenAI has eliminated the pattern-based detection boundary.
"Until now, the main defense relied on pattern-based detection – for example, automated filters and firewalls could recognize recurring fraud patterns, typical phrases or structures," she explains. "However, GenAI has eliminated that ‘pattern’ boundary. Today, criminals can use generative models to create contextually accurate messages. Models know how to write without grammatical errors, use precise terminology, and even replicate the communication style of institutions."
The scale and quality of attacks have evolved significantly with the emergence of GenAI, making traditional firewalls and spam filters lose their effectiveness.
"Criminals today have access to a broad arsenal of AI tools," Dr. Brūzgienė warns. "They use models such as GPT-4, GPT-5, Claude, and open-source alternatives like Llama, Falcon, and Mistral – as well as darker variants such as FraudGPT, WormGPT, or GhostGPT, specifically designed for malicious activities."
These tools are being used to create photorealistic face photos, deepfake videos, and document copies with meticulously edited metadata. LLMs generate high-quality, personalized phishing texts and onboarding dialogues, TTS and voice-cloning models recreate a victim's or employee's voice, and image generation tools produce 'liveness' videos that fool verification systems.
Automated AI agents then handle the rest – creating accounts, uploading documents, and responding to challenges. These multimodal chains can bypass both automated and human verification based on trust.
"The scary part," Dr. Brūzgienė concludes, "is how accessible all of this has become. Commercial TTS solutions like ElevenLabs and open-source implementations of VALL-E provide high-quality voice cloning to anyone. Stable Diffusion, DeepFaceLab, and similar tools make it easy to generate photorealistic images or deepfakes quickly."
As a result, a single operator can create hundreds of convincing, different, yet interconnected fake profiles in a short time.
Another new frontier is adaptive AI-driven social engineering. Attackers no longer rely on static scripts – they use LLMs that adapt to a victim's reactions in real time.
The initiative aims to develop innovative solutions to protect citizens from emerging threats such as these. By leveraging innovation and collaboration, Lithuania is at the forefront of a global effort to combat AI-driven cyber fraud and build a secure, digitally empowered society.
Related Information:
https://www.ethicalhackingnews.com/articles/Embracing-Innovation-Lithuanias-National-Initiative-Against-AI-Driven-Cyber-Fraud-ehn.shtml
https://thehackernews.com/2026/02/safe-and-inclusive-esociety-how.html
https://news.tosunkaya.com/securing-an-inclusive-digital-society-lithuanias-defense-against-ai-powered-fraud/
Published: Wed Feb 18 13:20:40 2026 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M
