FBI warned that cybercriminals use “deepfake” to get remote jobs and steal data from companies

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States has issued a statement warning of the new modality that cybercriminals are using to steal information from companies. They use technology calleddeepfake” to impersonate other people and work remotely, but in order to access sensitive information.

“The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) warns of the Increase in complaints reporting the use of deepfakes and theft of personally identifiable information to apply for a variety of remote and work-at-home positions”, assured the FBI in its report.

The Bureau also indicated the jobs that are targets of cybercriminals. “The telecommuting or work-from-home positions identified in these reports include information technology and computer programming, database and software functions. In particular, Some of the positions reported include access to personal customer information, financial data, corporate computer databases, and/or proprietary information.”, he added.

“Complaints report the use of voice spoofing, or possibly voice deepfakes, during online interviews of prospective applicants. In these interviews, the actions and lip movements of the person being interviewed in front of the camera are not fully coordinated with the audio of the person speaking. Sometimes actions such as coughing, sneezing, or other auditory actions are not aligned with what is visually presented”, assured the FBI, so that recruiters can identify cybercriminals.

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What is deepfake?

According to a report in The Guardian, “deepfakes use a form of artificial intelligence called ‘deep learning’ to create fake event images, hence the name ‘deepfake’”. In this way, you can edit, for example, a video with a person falling, but the face that is shown is that of a famous person.

“It’s hard to make a good deepfake on a standard computer. Most are built on high-end desktops with powerful graphics cards or, better yet, cloud computing power. This reduces processing time from days and weeks to hours. But experience is also needed, especially to retouch entire videos to reduce flickering and other visual artifacts. That said, there are now plenty of tools available to help people deepfake.”, added the British newspaper.

And not only can you put in someone else’s face, you can also manipulate the audio to sound like their voice. “Audio can also be spoofed to create ‘voice masks’ or ‘voice clones’ of public figures. Last March (2019), the head of a UK subsidiary of a German energy company paid almost £200,000 into a Hungarian bank account after a scammer called him and imitated the voice of the German CEO”, indicated the medium.

Source: Elcomercio

James

I have worked as a journalist for over 10 years and have written for various news outlets. I currently work as an author at 24 News Recorder, mostly covering entertainment news. I have a keen interest in the industry and enjoy writing about the latest news and gossip. I am also a member of the National Association of Journalists.