Matthew RosenquistFounder & CISO Advisor, Cybersecurity Insights · CISO, Cybersecurity Strategist, & Industry Advisor

A Great AI Phishing Attempt - Cyber Crime Junkies #cybersecurity #podcast

3 Jan 2026 · 1 min

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1:01

In this podcast excerpt, the host recounts receiving a highly personalized phishing email that went beyond generic spam. The email began with a simple mail‑merge greeting but then included three detailed paragraphs that accurately described the host’s professional background—work history, talks, panels, and keynotes—by pulling information from the host’s LinkedIn profile, personal website, and YouTube channel. The speaker notes that an AI system performed the data harvesting and text generation, producing a convincing narrative with only minor contextual errors. While the email was still recognizable as phishing, the host expresses excitement at the sophistication of the attack and reflects on the implications for social‑engineering defenses.

Chapters

In fact, I just, I did a video not that long ago because I received a great phishing attempt. I loved it. I was so excited about this phishing attempt that I got in my email and I knew it was phishing, but it's, you know, normal phishing that we're used to. It's like a generic message and it's kind of vague and click here. And what was this one about? This one opened up, right, with my name, which is fine. That's easy. That's mail merge, right? But it then spent 3 full paragraphs talking about my work history and things that I've posted and concepts that I've led and panels that I've been on and keynotes that I've spoken to and how it was so relevant. And then they start, 'cause they went out to my LinkedIn page, they went out and scraped my webpage and looked at my YouTube videos. And it was an AI system that grabbed it all. And it did a really good job. There were a few contextual nuances that it didn't get right. But overall, Pausen.