Why is “deepfake” easy to fake face, fake voice and become a fraud tool for billions of dong?

What is Deepfake?

Deepfake is a term made up of two concepts “deep learning”, an artificial intelligence technology built on Google’s open source code, and “fake” referring to falsehood. Because it is open source, this artificial intelligence technology has been used by many organizations, building applications for many different purposes.

Deepfake has the ability to learn a person’s image information data based on videos, photos … of that person and replace it with another body. In simple terms, deepfake will turn person A’s face into person B’s if it has all the face data of person B.

What’s more frightening is that, not only changing the image data, deepfake can even change the audio data (voice). Because of this, many objects have taken advantage of deepfakes to commit fraud and appropriate property.

Why is “deepfake” easy to become a phishing tool?

In early September 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported a case of fake voice to defraud a company of $ 243,000. Specifically, the criminals used deepfake voice generator software to impersonate the boss of a German corporation and ask the company’s CEO to make a money transfer to the Hungarian partner within an hour of the agreement. promise the amount will be refunded immediately.

Unable to realize this sophistication, the CEO thought that deepfake was his boss, because the artificial intelligence was so intelligent that it could fake a very similar German accent, the amount of 243,000 USD (not 5.7 billion VND). ) has been moved and not returned.

Not only is it fake voice, deepfake’s ability to learn is also used to fake the image of famous people, billionaire Elon Musk has been a victim of this technology, for the purpose of appropriating money. electronic. According to Bleeping Computer, this guy created a cryptocurrency exchange called BitVex that allows users to deposit cryptocurrencies and can earn 30% of profits every day, the profit can even increase if the deposit is large enough. To increase the credibility of his behavior, the scammer even posted videos of the co-founders, including Elon Musk, of course our billionaire is not related to BitVex, everything is fine. is a product of deepfake.

BitVex’s scam was quickly discovered, the amount of money that the counterfeiter collected was only about 1,700 USD.

Warning: These sophisticated, high-tech scams have also appeared in Vietnam, in the form of money transfer scams to appropriate property.

Recently, a 26-year-old VTM (living in Long Bien district – Hanoi) was recorded, receiving a message to borrow money from a relative’s Facebook account, with a request to transfer money to another bank account.

Although there was vigilance, Ms. M made a video call with the above Facebook account to verify, but the image that appeared was a close friend, only the sound was not too clear, although she M still has no doubts and has already transferred 75 million dong. After that, Ms. M’s friend announced that her Facebook account had now been taken over by the crooks and did not send a message to borrow money from Ms. M.

The dangers of deepfake have been warned since the technology began to become widely available. High technology combined with the sophistication of bad actors makes the fraudulent practice of appropriating assets increasingly difficult to detect.

It is difficult to distinguish deepfakes even if you make a video call to verify, so be very careful with messages that borrow money from social network accounts, even relatives. Do a multi-step check when you notice something amiss.