Cybercriminals are now using deepfake video technology to make fraudulent calls and appropriate money.
Dang Anh Quang, living in Hanoi’s Hai Ba Trung District, received an urgent request to borrow money from the Zalo account of his best friend.
He received a video call during which he could see his friend’s face and hear his voice. He did not hesitate and sent 20 million dong (RM3,790) to the bank account mentioned in the Zalo chat.
Quang then found out that he was scammed by deepfake technology.
“The face I saw in the video call was quite blurry,” he told Vietnam News Agency. “He spoke a few words, then the call was interrupted. I thought the Internet connection was bad.”
According to Kaspersky, deepfake videos are a portmanteau word – “deep” from ‘deep learning’ and “fake”.
Deep learning is an advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) method which uses multiple layers of machine learning algorithms to extract progressively higher-level features from raw input.
It can learn from unstructured data – such as the human face.
For instance, according to Kaspersky, AI can gather data on your physical movements.
Deepfake technology has created video technology products with sound and images that fake real-life objects with high accuracy. The fake video will look more real as the technology collects more data about the shape and voice of social network users.
Dr Dinh Viet Sang, deputy director of the International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence, Hanoi University of Science and Technology, said videos and images of individuals posted on social network platforms are sources for criminals to create fake videos.
Cybersecurity expert Vu Thanh Thang from Smart Cyber Security Company said the deepfake videos aim to earn the trust of victims, according to Thang.
Those deepfake videos last only a few seconds, often with unclear images and sound.
According to Vu Ngoc Son, technology director of NCS Network Security Company, the tricks and forms of fraud are not new, but the fraudsters are now applying advanced technology. The possibility of success is higher.
The development of AI and applications like deepfake helps an ordinary person, who does not need to be good at technology or graphics processing, to create photo, video and voice collages easily.
He warned that online fraud using deepfake would grow in the future because the amount of money appropriated is huge while the scammers do not have to spend lots of effort.
According to the Ministry of Information and Communications, more than 3,200 fraudulent websites were detected in the first three months of 2023 in Vietnam. — Vietnam News/ANN
