Odaily News Avast's latest cyber threat report shows that social engineering has a significant dominance in cyber threats in the first quarter of 2024. The report shows that nearly 90% of cyber attacks on mobile devices and 87% of cyber attacks on desktop devices involve fraud, phishing and malicious advertising, exploiting more human vulnerabilities than technical vulnerabilities, and fraud activities using advanced technologies such as deep fake videos and AI manipulated audio have increased significantly. These fraud activities often use hijacked YouTube channels and other social media platforms to spread fraudulent content. The report emphasizes that such deception is becoming more and more sophisticated, and cybercriminals use high-profile events and figures to increase the credibility of their fraud. YouTube, in particular, has become a key carrier of these threats. Avast's telemetry data shows that 4 million unique users have been protected from YouTube-based threats in the past year, with about 500,000 users protected in the first quarter alone. Cybercriminals are increasingly using YouTube's automatic advertising and user-generated content features to bypass traditional security measures and deploy a variety of attack methods from phishing campaigns to malware distribution. As technology-focused cryptojacking and hacking efforts have declined over the past year, Avast's report shows an increase in non-technical attacks. Human vulnerabilities are often the most difficult aspect of operational security, and artificial intelligence appears to have made enough progress to present considerable challenges for security experts. (cryptoslate)