Fraud And The Dark Side Of AI
Fake news is believed to have played an important role in such important electoral processes as the 2016 US presidential election and the 2016 Brexit referendum on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. Now there is another kind of fake that is causing concern when deep fake uses of artificial intelligence (AI) to create and edit seemingly real videos and audio recordings of people.
To do this, deepfakes use Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN), which are a kind of algorithm that can create new data from existing datasets. According to the experts at Panda Security, a GAN can analyse thousands of recordings of a person’s voice, and from this analysis, create a totally new audio file that sounds the same, and uses the same speech patterns.
The worries surrounding this technology lie in the possibility that it could be used to spread fake videos and recordings of politicians and other public figures. For example, a deepfake of a politician giving a racist speech could influence the outcome of an election, or even incite violence.
Deepfake Technology and Cybercrime
Although deepfakes are yet to cause any problems in the world of politics, we have now seen their first use in the world of cybercrime.In August this year, it was revealed that a cybercriminal had used deep fake to steal $220,000. The fraud began back in March 2019, when the scammer created a deepfake imitating the voice of the CEO of the victim’s parent company.
The victim, the CEO of an energy company, received a call that seemed to be from his boss. In the call, the chief executive asked for an ‘urgent’ transfer of £200,000 to a Hungarian provider, and told him he would be reimbursed. The victim was tricked into believing that the voice was his boss’s; it had a slight German accent, like his boss, which made the scam more believable.
Once the transaction had been confirmed, the scammers called back, asking for another transfer. By this time, the CEO had begun to grow suspicious, and refused to make the transfer. The funds were reportedly sent from Hungary to Mexico, before being transferred to other locations.
Although so-called “voice fraud” is nothing new, this incident is the first of its kind using deepfake technology. In fact, between 2013 and 2017, vishing (voice phishing) incidents grew 350%. Cybersecurity experts fear that this incident could be the start of a new cybercriminal trend of using artificial intelligence in this way.
Cyber Scams: a growing threat
Cybercriminals’ efforts to scam companies have increased significantly. The amount of money lost in BEC scams doubled between 2017 and 2018, and we regularly see headlines related to this cybercriminal tactic.
Artificial intelligence, for good and evil
Although the example we have seen here demonstrates that artificial intelligence can be used to carry out cybercrimes, it can also be used to stop them. Deep learning and machine learning are important in detection of cyber threats that can endanger the IT systems of any organisation.
Cybercriminals will never stop innovating in their search for new techniques to get onto organisations’ networks, steal company data, and make money.
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