Author Date

2025-06-13

Degree Name

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

College

Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering

Defense Date

2025-02-27

Publication Date

2025-06-13

First Faculty Advisor

Benjamin Schooley

First Faculty Reader

Nancy Fulda

Honors Coordinator

Derek Hansen

Keywords

voice cloning, phishing, vishing, AI phishing, voice cloning and phishing

Abstract

Voice cloning is increasingly used as a form of phone-based phishing attack (i.e., vishing attack). The purpose of this research is to understand the impact of voice cloning on the success rate of vishing/phishing attacks. We hypothesize that calls utilizing cloned voices are more likely to deceive recipients compared to traditional vishing calls or text messages with the same phishing content. As AI cloning is a new technology, there is not much literature on this topic. To evaluate this hypothesis, we conduct a field experiment with students in university courses who receive a message purporting to be from a professor from one of their classes. Our results indicate that text messages were more frequently reported than voice messages, but there was no statistically significant difference in deception rates between voice cloning and text-based phishing. These findings suggest that while AI-generated voices do not significantly outperform text messages in phishing effectiveness, vishing remains a serious cybersecurity threat that warrants further study, especially as people are unaware of the technology and will not report it at the same rate as traditional text phishing.