Raviv Raz
Only AI itself can keep up with the speed and sophistication of AI
Attendees of Raviv Raz’s latest talk at Cyber Security & Cloud Expo 2023 should not be surprised if they are treated to a scene from the popular US television series Mr. Robot. It’s a glimpse of his former working life, of sorts, before joining ING.
The open-source hackers’ tool Raviv developed, called R.U.D.Y. (RU Dead Yet), not only made an appearance in the TV series, but was also adopted by the international activist and hacktivist collective Anonymous. And that’s just a taster of the exciting stuff Raviv did before he joined ING. At the bank, he is now putting his two decades of experience to good use and working on equally exciting tech matters.
Thrilling work
“It’s true that I was involved in some quite thrilling work before I joined ING. As a professional hacker, you’re constantly walking a fine line between what is and what isn’t acceptable. I’ve come into contact with all kinds of intriguing parties, both ‘black-hat’ and ‘white-hat’ hackers operating on either sides of the law. So some people might not immediately understand my decision to move to a bank. But at ING I’m still working on exciting tech matters, only now it’s together with highly qualified, supersmart people who are dedicated to keeping the bank, its customers and society as a whole safe.”
Inspiration
“What with the multidisciplinary experts and the bank’s resources, I knew we could come up with some innovative technologies together. And indeed, as ING’s Advanced Analytics team, we received inspirational support from senior management. They encouraged us to try and apply cutting-edge AI research to create impact and help thousands of engineers across the bank.”
AI: a weapon of unprecedented proportions
“Through my talk, which is titled ‘AI 4 a crime’, I want to make people aware of the power of artificial intelligence and how it can be deployed quite easily for malicious purposes. In fact, AI is a weapon of unprecedented proportions – it’s the master key to a lot of things and a powerful, potentially dangerous tool for criminals and unscrupulous states.”
Lightning-fast advancement
“I addressed the lightning-fast advancement of AI. What seemed like science fiction just a few years ago is already a reality today. To put it very bluntly, only AI itself can keep up with the speed and sophistication of AI. But that doesn’t mean we can’t delve deeper and continue working on further developments to parry AI and fight its excesses.”
Get ready for some eye-openers
The presentation gave a broad overview of how fake voices and videos can easily mislead anyone, hacking examples, a bit of social engineering and some radical eye-openers.
About Raviv
Raviv grew up in both Israel and Hungary. Having started his computer programming at the age of seven, he has more than 20 years of experience in computing, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, plus he has always been interested in philosophy, psychology and languages. He holds a black belt in Goju-Riyu Karate, and had some training in Brazilian Jujitsu ground combat. He is passionate about rock and heavy-metal music and plays guitar.
At ING, Raviv is the Cloud Security Manager, having joined the bank in ING’s Labs as an entrepreneur leading the CodeFix innovation initiative: a research project around the use of AI for detecting and fixing security vulnerabilities in Java source code. Robotics and AI are his favourite topics and he loves exploring them further, both within ING and as a hobby.
both within ING and as a hobby.