RESEARCH from global cybersecurity leader Trend Micro shows that the explosion of enterprise AI use has resulted in a dramatic increase in AI-based tools available for illegal intent. These tools are cheaper and more accessible than ever, enabling criminals at any skill level to more easily launch attacks at scale.
According to Gartner analyst Dan Ayoub, “Readily available, high-quality GenAI applications are now capable of creating photo-realistic video content that can deceive or mislead an audience. Given the low barriers to entry in using these increasingly sophisticated tools, developing a methodological approach to detecting GenAI deepfake content has become necessary.”
Deepfake tools galore
Trend Micro’s latest research also reveals the availability of deep fake technology and the sophistication of AI tools in the cybercrime underground has created more opportunities for mass exploitation, even by non-technically minded cybercriminals.
Several new deepfake tools on the cybercrime underground that create highly convincing but fake videos and images seamlessly include:
– DeepNude Pro. A criminal service that claims to be able to rework the image of any individual without clothes for sextortion campaigns.
– Deepfake 3D Pro. Generates entirely synthetic 3D avatars featuring a face taken from the picture of a victim, which can then be programmed to follow recorded or generated speech. This could be used to fool banks’ KYC checks or used to impersonate celebrities in scams and vishing campaigns.
– Deepfake AI. Enables criminals to stitch a victim’s face to a compromising video to ruin the victim’s reputation and/or use it as extortion or be used to spread fake news. The technology supports only pre-recorded videos.
– SwapFace. Enables criminals to fake real-time video streams for BEC attacks and other corporate scams.
– VideoCallSpoofer. Similar to SwapFace, it can generate a realistic 3D avatar from one picture and have it follow the movement of an actor’s face. This enables deepfakes to be streamed on video conferencing calls and similar scams, fake news, and other trickery.
Aside from deepfakes, the report reveals the re-emergence of defunct criminal LLM services like WormGPT and DarkBERT, which are now armed with new functionality. They are being advertised alongside new offerings, such as DarkGemini and TorGPT, now equipped with multimodal capabilities, including image-generation services.
However, the report notes that many of the ChatGPT-lookalike services offered on the cybercrime underground are little more than “jailbreak-as-a-service” front-ends designed to trick commercial LLMs into providing unfiltered responses to malicious queries. It also observes that cybercriminals have generally adopted malicious generative AI tools relatively slowly. That’s most likely because current tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) work effectively enough without introducing new technology.
Time to innovate
With the increasing sophistication and frequency of cyberattacks, traditional cybersecurity measures are not enough. Businesses need to proactively test their systems and networks for potential weaknesses and fix them before threat actors exploit them. Individuals should be cautious of unsolicited communications and verify the authenticity of online interactions.
Detecting and defeating these AI-based methods is central to better managing attack surface risk for enterprises and lowering overall online risk for consumers — 71 percent of whom, in a recent Trend Micro survey, viewed deepfakes negatively and believed that one of their top uses is for fraud.
As part of its continuing innovation program, the Trend Vision One platform will soon make available the new deepfake detection technology using a variety of advanced methods to spot AI-generated content.
Trend Vision One is based on stopping adversaries faster and taking control of cyber risks starting with a single platform. This allows managing security holistically with comprehensive prevention, detection and response capabilities powered by AI.
Trend Vision One supports diverse hybrid IT environments, automates and orchestrates workflows, and delivers expert cybersecurity services to simplify and converge security operations.
The launch of Trend Micro’s new solutions is part of a company-wide mission to secure customers’ AI journey across clouds, networks, devices and endpoints.
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