According to a prominent security counsel for the UK-based infosec business Sophos, the fear of deepfake scams is entirely exaggerated.
According to John Shier, senior security adviser for cybersecurity company Sophos, hackers may never need to utilize deepfakes on a large scale because there are other, more effective ways to deceive individuals into giving up personal information and financial data.
As per Shier, phishing and other types of social engineering are much more effective than deepfakes, which are artificial intelligence-generated videos that imitate human speech.
What are deepfakes?
Scammers frequently use technology to carry out 'Identity Theft'. In order to demonstrate the risks of deepfakes, researchers in 2018 employed the technology to assume the identity of former US President Barack Obama and disseminate a hoax online.
Shier believes that while deepfakes may be overkill for some kinds of fraud, romance scams—in which a scammer develops a close relationship with their victim online in order to persuade them to send them money—could make good use of the technology because videos will give an online identity inherent legitimacy.
Since deepfake technology has gotten simpler to access and apply, Eric Horvitz, chief science officer at Microsoft, outlines his opinion that in the near future, "we won't be able to tell if the person we're chatting to on a video conversation is real or an impostor."
The expert also anticipates that deepfakes will become more common in several sectors, including romance scams. Making convincing false personas requires a significant commitment of time, effort, and devotion, and adding a deepfake does not require much more work. Shier is concerned that deepfaked romance frauds might become an issue if AI makes it possible for the con artist to operate on a large scale.
Shier was hesitant to assign a date for industrialized deepfake bots, but he claimed that the required technology is becoming better and better every year.
The researcher noted that "AI experts make it sound like it is still a few years away from the huge effect." In the interim, we will observe well-funded criminal organizations carrying out the subsequent degree of compromise to deceive victims into writing checks into accounts.
Deepfakes have historically been employed primarily to produce sexualized images and movies, almost always featuring women.
Nevertheless, a Binance PR executive recently disclosed that fraudsters had developed a deepfaked clone that took part in Zoom calls and attempted to conduct bitcoin scams.
Deepfakes may not necessarily be a scammer's primary tactic, but security researchers at Trend Micro said last month that they are frequently used to augment other techniques. The lifelike computerized images have recently appeared in online advertisements, phony business meetings, and job seeker frauds. The distress is that anybody could become a victim because the internet is so pervasive.
