The Cutting Edge of AI Cyber Attacks: Deepfake Audio Used to Impersonate Senior Executives

There is a great deal of public concern about deepfakes, most of it centered on the ramifications of being able to quickly and easily face-swap videos. That concern is certainly well-founded, but it may be obscuring an even more immediate threat – deepfake audio. Voice-swapping has already been put to use in at least a handful of artificial intelligence (AI) cyber attacks on businesses, enabling attackers to gain access to corporate networks and convince employees to authorize a money transfer. The primary use of deepfake audio is to enhance a very common type of attack – business email compromise (BEC). A business email compromise attack usually begins with some sort of phishing to gain access to the company network and reconnoiter the payment systems.