Imposters use deepfakes to land remote IT jobs

A recent announcement by the FBI revealed that an increasing number of organisations are reporting individuals applying to jobs using deepfakes.

Fraudsters are using video, images, recordings, and stolen identities, to pretend to be someone else to get a remote IT position. This may sound stranger than fiction, but hiring a deepfake can have serious consequences, should an imposter gain access to sensitive corporate information and customer data.

According to Kaspersky, this may pose a threat to a business’s data security, and in an event of a breach, the company won't have the opportunity to bring the fraudster to justice.

And this isn’t the only way scammers are using deepfakes to take advantage of a business. As technology evolves, bad actors can use this new method to cheat biometric tests used by banks and crypto-currency exchanges to verify users’ identities for money laundering.

A recent report from Sensity revealed that the top 10 know-your-customer (KYC) vendors were highly vulnerable to deepfake attacks.

In addition, deepfakes are being used for spear or targeted phishing. Threat actors can mimic a company’s executives to gain an individual’s trust and fool them into turning over sensitive data, money, or access to the organisation’s infrastructure.

In one case, Kaspersky says criminals got away with $35 million by forging the voice of a company director. “Understanding the danger is half the battle,” says Vladislav Tushkanov, lead data scientist at Kaspersky. “Educate your employees and let them know about the new fraudulent methods.”

He says a high-quality deepfake requires a lot of expertise and effort, while fakes used for scams or synchronous interaction during an interview would probably be low-quality.

“Among signs of a deepfake, there are unnatural lip movements, poorly rendered hair, mismatched face shapes, little to no blinking, skin colour mismatches, errors in the rendering of clothes, or a hand passing over the face,” Tushkanov explains.

On the other hand, he says a bad actor might intentionally lower the quality of the video to obscure these elements.

“To minimise the chance of hiring a fake employee, break job interviews into several stages involving not only HR managers but also people who will be working with a new employee. This will increase the chances of spotting anything unusual.”

In ending, he says technology is also helpful in combating deepfakes. A reliable cyber security solution will ensure support if a good-quality deepfake convinces an employee to download malicious files or programs, or should they click on a suspicious link or phishing Web site.