Drivers working for Amazon Delivery Service Partners (DSPs) are increasingly under constant surveillance for safe driving, monitored by artificial intelligence which awards them a score and generates voice reminders for safe driving. That score is used to award bonuses, promotions and more. Drivers who spoke to Vice's Motherboard complained the tech is too sensitive, often wrong and making their jobs miserable -- and not to mention, taking money out of their paycheck. But Amazon spokeswoman Alexandra Miller told Threatpost if the choice is between a few unhappy drivers and improved safety, it's an easy call -- safety wins. Earlier this year, Amazon rolled out the pilot program for its DSPs using video surveillance and AI tech from Netradyne.

Artificial intelligence and the rise of deepfake technology is something cybersecurity researchers have cautioned about for years and now it's officially arrived. Cybercriminals are increasingly sharing, developing and deploying deepfake technologies to bypass biometric security protections, and in crimes including blackmail, identity theft, social engineering-based attacks and more, experts warn. Time to get those cybersecurity defenses ready. Join Threatpost for "Fortifying Your Business Against Ransomware, DDoS & Cryptojacking Attacks" a LIVE roundtable event on Wednesday, May 12 at 2:00 PM EDT for this FREE webinar sponsored by Zoho ManageEngine. A drastic uptick in deepfake technology and service offerings across the Dark Web is the first sign a new wave of fraud is just about to crash in, according to a new report from Recorded Future, which ominously predicted that deepfakes are on the rise among threat actors with an enormous range of goals and interests.

From malicious hacks to accidental misconfigurations, Chris Vickery has seen it all. But as cybercriminals continue to innovate, Vickery, the director of risk research with UpGuard, said one emerging security threat will "blindside" the world: "fakeable" voices. More bad actors using artificial intelligence (AI) will create copycat voices of a trusted family member or executive, he said – and they then call individuals – and even enterprises – and scam them out of money or valuable data. Vickery also talks to Threatpost about fringe data breach discoveries he's encountered over the last few years, as well as how the process of data breach disclosure is shifting and the best first steps companies can take once a data breach has been discovered. Find the full video interview with Vickery below, or click here. Below is a lightly edited transcript of the interview.

For over five years Derek Manky, global security strategist at Fortinet and FortiGuard Labs, has been helping the private and public sector identify and fight cybercrime. His job also includes working with noted groups: Computer Emergency Response, NATO NICP, INTERPOL Expert Working Group and the Cyber Threat Alliance. Recently Threatpost caught up with Manky to discuss the latest developments around his research on botnet "swarm intelligence." That's a technique where criminals enlist artificial intelligence (AI) inside botnet nodes. Those nodes are then programmed to work toward a common goal of bolstering an attack chain and accelerating the time it takes to breach an organization.

About a year ago, top deepfake artist Hao Li came to a disturbing realization: Deepfakes, i.e. the technique of human-image synthesis based on artificial intelligence (AI) to create fake content, is rapidly evolving. In fact, Li believes that in as soon as six months, deepfake videos will be completely undetectable. And that's spurring security and privacy concerns as the AI behind the technology becomes commercialized – and gets in the hands of malicious actors. Li, for his part, has seen the positives of the technology as a pioneering computer graphics and vision researcher, particularly for entertainment. He has worked his magic on various high-profile deepfake applications – from leading the charge in putting Paul Walker into Furious 7 after the actor died before the film finished production, to creating the facial-animation technology that Apple now uses in its Animoji feature in the iPhone X. But now, "I believe it will soon be a point where it isn't possible to detect if videos are fake or not," Li told Threatpost.

In the first known case of successful financial scamming via audio deep fakes, cybercrooks were able to create a near-perfect impersonation of a chief executive's voice – and then used the audio to fool his company into transferring $243,000 to their bank account. A deep fake is a plausible video or audio impersonation of someone, powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Security experts say that the incident, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, sets a dangerous precedent. "In the identity-verification industry, we're seeing more and more artificial intelligence-based identity fraud than ever before," David Thomas, CEO of identity verification company Evident, told Threatpost. "As a business, it's no longer enough to just trust that someone is who they say they are. Individuals and businesses are just now beginning to understand how important identity verification is. Especially in the new era of deep fakes, it's no longer just enough to trust a phone call or a video file."

LAS VEGAS – The Tencent Blade Team of researchers demonstrated several ways they have developed to hack and run remote code on Google Home smart speakers. The hacks center around what is known as a Magellan vulnerability, which can be used to exploit the massively popular SQLite database engine. Here at a session at DEF CON on Thursday, the researchers shed light on their work "breaking" Google Home. What made the talk unique wasn't necessarily that Google Home smart speakers could be compromised using Megellan – that was public news in Dec. 2018 – rather it was how the hack was pulled off. On stage Tencent researchers Wenxiang Qian, YuXiang Li and HuiYu Wu laid out the evolution of their research.