Artificial intelligence has once again been used for evil purposes, as revealed by the Hong Kong police. Someone posing as the chief financial officer of a UK-based company asked a finance worker from the multinational to carry out a secret transaction, and initial doubts were overcome with deepfake technology.
"A multinational company lost US$25.6 million in a scam after employees at its Hong Kong branch were fooled by deepfake technology, with one incident involving a digitally recreated version of its CFO ordering money transfers in a video conference call" https://t.co/bdwaIFz2JQ
How a scam valued at 25 million dollars was designed
After receiving the phishing email, the worker was invited to a video call with several people who looked and sounded like his colleagues, however, they were not actually them: they had used deepfake technology.
However, this deception was enough to trick the worker and he paid approximately 25.6 million dollars to the scammers. And this is not the first case in which this technology has been misused, according to the Hong Kong police, several incidents have occurred that have led to six arrests.
According to CNN, it was only discovered that the transfer was a scam when the employee contacted the company headquarters. No information about the company has been shared, and the current employment status of the worker after losing so much money is unknown.
The video call that tricked the employee included several people from the company pretending to be him. This demonstrates how powerful technology is and why literacy in these emerging technologies is crucial.
Some of the measures that end users can take to detect deepfakes are: lack of facial feature matching, verification of information with reliable news sources, and looking for unusual lighting, shadows, or head movements.
Author: Chema Carvajal Sarabia
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