It’s been a while we have been playing with face jamming applications, and it’s time to realize the security implications. I won’t back off to quote this, “With great fun comes great responsibility.” In this article, we will blaze through a few of the recent incidents that not only lead to loss of millions, but also widen the domain of potential risks to organizations.
Attackers already started using Deepfakes Audio to impersonate higher officials to transfer millions to untraceable bank accounts. In the last three reported audio attacks, attackers impersonated CEO and requested Senior financial officers for urgent money transfer. And others haven’t reported yet due to internal disclosure policies. Just imagine the degree of threat such attack posses. The real tension lies in the distinction partl. Till now, we haven’t had a tool to identify the deepfake audios.
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Is it energizing Social Engineering to the next step?
Social engineering techniques can be identified, and by taking some precautions, users can avoid such attacks involving clicking links in emails, sharing secure credentials, well crafted SMSs. But Deepfakes can go beyond the traditional social engineering techniques and can cause extensive loss to the organizations.
With technological advancements, in today’s market, you can find dozen of voice simulation tools capable of cloning voice from existing recordings and can be used later for malicious purposes. Such incidents could quickly impact the current situation and investment inflow of a company, and competitors can take great advantage of such deepfakes and even lead to reputational damage.
Due to the availability of such technologies and tools for the creation of such audio and videos will impact more than the executive, VIPS, or government officials. In the past, we have seen many such incidents where celebrities were doing some funny movements or politicians were spreading hatred speech; it’s just the beginning of exploration to the deepfakes, and the outcome is disastrous. With high-end tools, attackers can effectively add sound like an airport background, which may cause the potential victim to believe the falsified audio deepfakes.
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The Silver lining
One of the few positives is that a very accurate deep fake can take thousands of dollars to train a model and high-end computing resources consistently. For ordinary cybercriminal or script kiddie-type of the threat actor, this might not be a big concern. Still, if threat groups or potential criminals with lots of money are behind it, it’s a big-time to tighten the existing security model of your organization. This technology is in the development phase, and social engineering technologies are not that sophisticated, trained eyes and ears can still detect them.
Stand against DeepFakes
- Multi-factor verification and authentication: With technological advancements, it will become challenging to identify deepfakes, and somehow it is necessary to set up anti-deepfake protocols, which requires the involvement of multi-factor checks and verifications.
- Proper training: Every organization must start putting effort into a formal training program for awareness of such deepfake attacks. Organizations must enhance enterprise security by ensuring that employees understand cutting-edge social engineering techniques.
- The requirement of new protocols: New deepfake protocol needs to be in place along with some identification tools that can enforce a certain degree of trustworthiness while listening to voice mails or responding to a well-crafted email.
Conclusion
While organizations are losing millions and their reputation, we cannot avoid the fact that deepfake audio and video threats are for real and have the potential to shake the integrity of a firm. With proper training programs, awareness of such attacks, and social engineering techniques, advanced security tools, and multi-factor authentications, organizations can significantly increase the chance of fighting against the deepfakes.
About Harsit Mohapatra
Harsit Mohapatra is a full-time Software Engineer passionate and hungry for tech updates and knowledge. Besides being a crazy software developer, he is an avid traveller and loves capturing the things that give him a perception through his lenses