DISC InfoSec blogDeepfakes Archives

Jan 28 2025

Deepfake Engineering: A New Concern for the C-Suite

Category: Deepfakes — disc7 @ 9:00 am

The article highlights the rising threat of deepfake technology as a growing concern for organizations and their leadership teams. Deepfake engineering uses AI to create highly realistic audio and video manipulations, which can be exploited for fraud, espionage, or reputational damage. These attacks target businesses through impersonation of executives, manipulation of video calls, and deceptive communications to mislead stakeholders or extract sensitive information.

The piece emphasizes the need for organizations to strengthen their defenses by implementing deepfake detection technologies, training employees to recognize manipulated content, and establishing policies to verify the authenticity of communications. As deepfake technology advances, it becomes a critical challenge for the C-suite to address proactively as part of their broader cybersecurity strategy.

Role-based social engineering training is the gold standard today, but it’s not foolproof. An even better approach would incorporate a personality assessment. Those who rank high in agreeableness and extroversion might require a different flavor of training to ensure that they don’t fall victim to the types of attacks that persuade others to want to help. Those that rank very high in obedience, for example, might need specific insights into how to avoid the appeal to authority attack, where someone pretends to be a VIP (made much easier with deepfake technology) to obtain information from their target.

For further details, access the article here

Deepfake Defense: Protecting Your Business from AI Fraud and Misinformation

Tags: Deefake Engineering, Deepfake Defense

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May 30 2024

Meta says it removed six influence campaigns including those from Israel and China

Category: cyber security,Cyberweapon,Deepfakes,Digital cold war,Disinformation — disc7 @ 9:39 am

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/29/24167164/meta-covert-influence-campaigns-ai-china-israel

Some inauthentic networks used artificial intelligence in their campaigns to push certain political agendas, according to Meta.

Meta says it cracked down on propaganda campaigns on its platforms, including one that used AI to influence political discourse and create the illusion of wider support for certain viewpoints, according to its quarterly threat report published today. Some campaigns pushed political narratives about current events, including campaigns coming from Israel and Iran that posted in support of the Israeli government.

The networks used Facebook and Instagram accounts to try to influence political agendas around the world. The campaigns — some of which also originated in Bangladesh, China, and Croatia — used fake accounts to post in support of political movements, promote fake news outlets, or comment on the posts of legitimate news organizations.

A network originating in China, for example, consisted of several dozen Instagram and Facebook accounts, pages, and groups and was used to target global Sikh communities, Meta says. Another campaign traced to Israel used more than 500 Facebook and Instagram accounts to pose as local Jewish students, African Americans, and “concerned” citizens praising Israeli military actions and discussing campus antisemitism, among other types of content.

Some of the content shared by those two networks was likely created using generative AI tools, Meta writes. Accounts in the China-based campaign shared AI-generated images, and the Israeli campaign posted AI-generated comments, Meta found. The report says that, for now, AI-powered influence campaigns are not sophisticated enough to evade existing systems of detection.

Influence campaigns are regularly discovered on social media platforms. Earlier in May, TikTok said it had uncovered and disrupted a dozen such networks on its platform, including one that it traced to China.

How To Efficiently Fight By Digital Means Fake Political News and Blatant Disinformation: How to make sure that truth prevails.

EU tells Meta to crack down on Israel-Hamas disinfo

The Dozen Ds That Drive Israel’s Propaganda

Iran and Israel Use Media and Propaganda to Try to Shape Post-Attack Reality

Pegasus is listening

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Tags: China-based campaign, Fake Political News, israel propaganda campaign

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Feb 05 2024

Deepfaked video conference call makes employee send $25 million to scammers

Category: Deepfakes — disc7 @ 8:36 am

Deepfaked video conference call makes employee send $25 million to scammers

A deepfake video conference call paired with social engineering tricks has led to the theft of over US$25 million from a multinational firm, the South China Morning Post has reported.

The scheme and the deepfake video conference call

The attack started with messages sent to several of the firm’s employees, but it seems that only one – employed in the finance department of the company’s Hong Kong branch’s – was ultimately bamboozled.

According to the SCMP, the employee’s suspicion were raised when they received the message, purportedly by the company’s UK-based Chief Financial Officer, asking the employee to carry out a secret transaction. But they have been later quelled by a group video conference to which the employee was invited.

Present in the video conference were the company’s CFO, other company staff and even outsiders – or so it seemed.

In reality, the fraudsters used previous video and audio footage and artificial intelligence technology to create the illusion these individuals were present on the call and make these digital recreations “speak” to pull off the illusion.

Baron Chan Shun-ching, a superintendent with Hong Kong Police’s cyber security division, told the SCMP that “during the video conference, the scammers asked the victim to do a self-introduction but did not actually interact with the person. The fake images on screen mainly gave orders before the meeting ended abruptly.”

After the call, the scammers delivered additional instructions via IM, emails and one-on-one video calls. As instructed, the employee sent a total of HK$200 million to five local bank accounts.

Several other employees at the same company branch have also contacted by the scammers, the Hong Kong police said, but did not share how those interactions unfolded.

Deepfakes are getting more difficult to spot

AI-generated deepfakes (whether audio or video) are increasingly being leveraged by scammers and other crooks.

They are using artificial intelligence to impersonate family members in distress, impersonate individuals to open bank accounts or make fraudulent purchases in their name, apply for loans, obtain remote IT jobs, and (as in this case) trick executives and employees into transfering company money.

Most people overestimate their deepfake detection skills. This is all new territory, and deepfakes are getting more realistic and more difficult to spot by the day.

“We want to alert the public to these new deception tactics. In the past, we would assume these scams would only involve two people in one-on-one situations, but we can see from this case that fraudsters are able to use AI technology in online meetings, so people must be vigilant even in meetings with lots of participants,” Chan Shun-ching said during a press event.

The Hong Kong Police has advised the public to ask questions during these meetings, ask the participants to move, and confirm requests made during those calls via alternative communication channels.

What happens when anyone can make a video of you saying anything?

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Jul 15 2022

What is Deepfake, and how does it Affect Cybersecurity?

Category: Deepfakes — DISC @ 8:34 am

What is Deepfake, and how does it Affect Cybersecurity?

Producing deepfake is easy. It is hard to detect. They operate with a description of reality rather than reality itself (e.g., a video). Any artifact a system can identify to support a Deepfake can also be removed in a subsequent Deepfake creation. This article discusses the art of Deepfake.

Table of Contents

#DeepFake – What happens when anyone can make a video of you saying anything?

Deepfake by Sarah Darer Littman | Fall 2020 Online Preview - YouTube

Tags: Deepfake

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Jun 10 2021

Detecting Deepfake Picture Editing

Category: Deepfakes — DISC @ 8:54 pm

Detecting Deepfake Picture Editing

In a world of deepfakes, it will soon be impossible to tell what is real and what isn’t. As advances in artificial intelligence, video creation, and online trolling continue, deepfakes pose not only a real threat to democracy — they threaten to take voter manipulation to unprecedented new heights. This crisis of misinformation which we now face has since been dubbed the “Infocalypse.”

In DEEPFAKES, investigative journalist Nina Schick uses her expertise from working in the field to reveal shocking examples of deepfakery and explain the dangerous political consequences of the Infocalypse, both in terms of national security and what it means for public trust in politics. This all-too-timely book also unveils what this all means for us as individuals, how deepfakes will be used to intimidate and to silence, for revenge and fraud, and just how truly unprepared governments and tech companies are for what’s coming.

Tags: Deepfake, Deepfake Picture Editing

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Feb 09 2021

How Venturing Into The Shady Side of The Dark Web Will Most Likely Get You Scammed or Arrested

Category: Deepfakes,Web Security — DISC @ 12:36 pm

How Venturing Into The Shady Side of The Dark Web Will Most Likely Get You Scammed or Arrested

The internet has come to be so developed, complex and ‘intelligent’ that, at present, you could say it is alive (like Skynet or The Matrix predicted?). Billions of people are online, every day, using the internet for work, entertainment, advice, you name it -it’s probably on the internet. We are now in the age of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data (or A.I for short). This period is an evolution, a transformation in the digital industry. Not only are petabytes of data being circulated on the internet (millions of terabytes); with A.I and Big Data all of this data is being put to use. This is effectively teaching the internet about user behavior, increasing the knowledge-base and making the internet into a neural-network able to ‘think’ for itself.

That’s all fine and dandy, but what about the dark side of the internet? Well, the evolution of the internet has spread so wide on countless digital channels and platforms, that the need to regulate and police the internet has risen. On such a vast network, there are countless dark organizations and cybercriminals looking to use the practicality of the internet as a communication tool for illegal activity. This can mean hacking and stealing data in the virtual realm, and it can also translate to the worst kinds of illicit activity imaginable in the physical realm.

So, let’s look at what lies beneath, in the underground world beneath the internet which is called the Deep Web. Then we’ll go even deeper down, and find out why the Dark Web is a dangerous and hostile place.

Tags: dark web

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Jun 12 2020