Are You For Real? Dealing with the Proliferation of Deepfakes

While this may sound like an elaborate plot from a whodunit film, it is in fact based on a recent, real-life wire fraud scheme perpetrated by a cyber-criminal using "deepfakes" generated by artificial intelligence (AI) technology. In the real scenario, the victim — a financial employee in a multinational company — received an email from the CFO regarding a "secret business transaction." The victim then joined a video conference with the CFO and other corporate executives, who all looked and sounded legitimate. During the meeting the victim was instructed to wire $25.5 million to multiple accounts. About a week later, after calling the corporate office, the victim learned this was all a scam. By then, the $25.5 million were gone.

The video images and voices of the CFO and other executives in this scam were "deepfakes," or video/audio of an individual in which their face/body and voice have been digitally altered so that they look and sound like someone else. These efforts are sometimes referred to as "synthetic media" and are being increasingly used maliciously by cyber criminals to spread false information, engage in social engineering attacks or obtain unauthorized monetary transfers (often through wires or cryptocurrencies).