FBI Warns Of Deepfake Content From Russia, China

The FBI recently issued guidance that synthetic content, including deepfakes, could be used by hackers from Russia, China and other countries in order to advance their influence and agendas.

“Foreign actors are currently using synthetic content in their influence campaigns, and the FBI anticipates it will be increasingly used by foreign and criminal cyber actors for spearphishing and social engineering in an evolution of cyber operational tradecraft,” according to the FBI guidance. 

The trend of synthetic content — defined by the FBI as manipulated images, video, audio or text — will likely change as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies continue to grow in sophistication. In its alert, the FBI pointed to private-sector research that revealed manipulated media from China and Russia was used in disinformation campaigns.

The FBI said in its Private Industry Notification (PIN) warning that it expects fraudsters will use deepfakes to support spear-phishing techniques and launch Business Identity Compromise attacks, which are intended to imitate corporate personas and authority figures.

Since 2017, fraudsters have been advancing their agendas by creating fake journalists to promote articles that seem authentic, the FBO said. The fictitious stories were often published and shared numerous times across social media platforms, electronic bulletin boards, and online forums. The falsified personalities typically have a solid online presence including the use of Generative Adversarial Networks or GANs profile images. 

The House Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce last year heard testimony from digital experts and a Facebook official about how tech firms were combating deepfakes, and what level of federal assistance was needed. Cybersecurity firm Deeptrace data indicated that there were nearly 14,700 deepfake videos online as of November of 2019. In December 2018, there were about 8,000.

Some 60 percent of all businesses have been victimized by synthetic identity fraud, which is among the financial crimes escalating in the U.S.  This type of criminal activity costs banks about $6 billion a year.