Toot Toot Here Comes the Deep Fake Pain Train

The Scam

Picture this: The receptionist gets to work, and there's a voicemail from the IT Manager saying that cleaners are coming today to clean around the printers due to dust issues.

Later in the day the cleaners arrive, they mention how the IT Manager organised for them to come in. The receptionist lets them into the secured area to start cleaning. They plant some devices onto the network, and boom you've now got IT criminals sitting on your network doing whatever they want, and you literally have no idea about it.

Deep Fakes

Why did this happen? The voice from the IT manager was faked by criminals using "Deep Fake" technology, and the receptionist couldn't tell the difference.

This is a whole new ballgame. Luckily it's early days, but as the tech evolves and becomes more accessible (though it's already pretty cheap), we are going to have to adapt and find new rules to stay safe.

And it doesn't just apply to voice - video can be faked as well, so consider that eventually you could be having a video chat with a computer generated person asking you to pay a new invoice, and you'd be none the wiser!

What does this mean for companies?

It's early days, but scams will develop over time and more companies will be targeted.

Maybe we need to try and map out circumstances where we are vulnerable, and have procedures for how we check legitimacy. Maybe we end up having a special code word or phrase to prove we are legit, like they do in the spy movies.

But with certainty, it's going to mean that we need to be even more suspicious, have more rigorous processes in place, and basically it's going to be a PITA for everyone legit due to the time we will have to take checking things "just in case" they are malicious.

Find out more

Have a look at deep fakes in a bit more detail with this YouTube video. Got any deep fake fraud stories? Please share them in the comments!