Hackers are combining deepfake videos and emulators to bypass biometric security solutions and breach people’s online services, new research shows.
According to a report by iProov, the use of the method among criminals has increased by 353% between the first and second half of 2023.
“Generative AI has provided a huge boost to the productivity of threat actors: these tools are relatively cheap, easily accessible, and can be used to create highly convincing synthesized media, such as face swaps or other forms of deepfakes that can easily fool humans keep an eye on this, but also less advanced biometric solutions. This only increases the need for highly secure remote identity verification,” said Andrew Newell, Chief Scientific Officer of iProov.
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Here’s how it works: The crooks would use artificial intelligence (AI) tools, some of which are cheap off-the-shelf solutions, to create relatively convincing face swaps and deepfake videos. They then used emulators to create virtual cameras. So when a biometric solution asks someone to authenticate via a facial scan, they can pull up the fake camera with the face-swap video on it and thus trick the tool into authenticating it.
The mobile platform seems particularly vulnerable to this threat. Injection attacks on mobile internet have more than doubled (255%) between the first half and the second half of 2023. The numbers are even worse if you exclude emulators and look exclusively at deepfake and face-swap attacks. Between the first half and the second half of 2023, there was a 704% increase in these attacks. Finally, the use of deepfake media in combination with metadata spoofing (e.g. IP address spoofing) increased by 672% between the two halves of last year.
The report also states that the hackers are working closely to improve and develop this technology. Apparently there is “significant growth” in the number of groups exchanging information on how to bypass human identification and video identification systems.
Of the groups identified by iProov’s analysts, almost half (47%) were founded by 2023, the company said.