Hackers are combining deepfake videos and emulators to bypass biometric security solutions and breach people's online services, new research claims.
A report from iProov states that the use of the method among criminals increased by 353% between the first and second half of 2023.
“Generative AI has provided a huge boost to the productivity levels of threat actors – these tools are relatively low cost, easily accessible and can be used to create highly convincing synthesized media, such as face swaps or other forms of deepfakes. that can easily deceive human beings. eye, as well as less advanced biometric solutions. This only serves to increase the need for highly secure remote identity verification,” said Andrew Newell, Chief Scientific Officer at iProov.
Knowledge sharing
Here's how it works: Criminals would use Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, some of which are cheap, off-the-shelf solutions, to create relatively convincing face swaps and deepfake videos. Then, they would use emulators to create virtual cameras. So when a biometric solution requests that a person authenticate using a face scan, it can display the fake camera with the face swap video and thus trick the tool into authenticating.
The mobile platform seems particularly vulnerable to this threat. Injection attacks against the mobile web more than doubled (255%) between the first and second half of 2023. The numbers are even worse when emulators are excluded and only deepfake and face-swapping attacks are analyzed. Between the first and second half of 2023, there has been a 704% increase in these attacks. Finally, the use of deepfake media together with metadata spoofing (e.g. IP spoofing) increased by 672% between the two halves of last year.
The report also states that hackers are collaborating closely to improve and develop this technique. There has apparently been “significant growth” in the number of groups exchanging information on how to circumvent human identification and video identification systems.
Of the groups identified by iProov analysts, almost half (47%) were created in 2023, the company said.
