FINANCE WORKER DEEPFAKED OUT OF $25 MILLION

A worker at a finance company in Hong Kong was tricked into paying around $25 million of his company’s money to some scammers using deepfake technology. The employee received a message from the company’s Chief Financial Officer mentioning a ‘secret transaction’, suggesting it was a phishing scam. Suspicious, he joined a video call with who he thought was the company’s chief financial officer. He noticed that the CFO apparently appeared to be “a little off.” However, he saw that other colleagues dialed in and supported the move, so the worker agreed to make 15 transfers into five local bank accounts. The scam was discovered when the worker checked with the company’s head office later. It turned out that not only was the boss a deepfake, but so was everyone else on the call. It appeared that all of the AI-generated videos were created using past online conferences. Neither the name of the employee nor the company has been revealed.
* This is something that will definitely come up at his employee review.
* This deepfake is putting this guy in deep doo-doo.
* 25 million. That’s, what, about half of one guy’s Christmas bonus at a finance company?
* One clue it was made from old video – his coworkers were wearing Covid masks.
* From now on, no getting into a video call unless you know the double-secret clubhouse password.