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A story from back in February about a group of scammers using deepfake technology put the world on notice after they successfully convinced a Hong Kong-based CFO to send $25.6 million to scammers by holding a video conference call and successfully impersonating high-level employees with deepfakes.
Recently, Ferrari NV was the target of a similar attack using deepfakes technology. According to a recent report from Bloomberg where they reviewed text messages from the would-be deepfakes scammers, a high-level Ferrari NV executive was contacted by someone purporting to be CEO Benedetto Vigna but the plot unraveled on a video call when the executive asked the deepfake version of Benedetto Vigna a question only the Ferrari CEO would know.
It began with WhatsApp messages to the executive saying “Be ready to sign the Non-Disclosure Agreement our lawyer is set to send you asap” and “Italy’s market regulator and Milan stock-exchange have been already informed. Stay ready and please utmost discretion.”
Those would be major red flags to any executive. Huge deals rarely happen without input from the C-Suite team. And at the very least, upper level executives are almost always aware of huge initiatives in the works.
The executive requested a video call and that’s where things began to unravel, according to Bloomberg. On the call, the scammer using deepfakes technology reportedly did “a spot-on imitation of the southern Italian accent” of Ferrari NV CEO Benedetto Vigna. So the voice + look was perfect, but there were minor details amiss that tipped the executive off that something was wrong.
The first cause for concern was the deepfake scammer saying they were calling from a different phone number “because he needed to discuss something confidential — a deal that could face some China-related snags and required an unspecified currency-hedge transaction to be carried out.” PRO TIP: if anyone in your field of business ever contacts you from a previously unknown number and there’s a sense of urgency, there’s a 99.99% chance it’s a scam these days.
After the phone number, the executive says there were “the slightest of mechanical intonations” that were off on the call and that’s when he said “Sorry, Benedetto, but I need to identify you” and hit the deepfakes scammers with a question only the real Ferrari NV CEO Benedetto Vigna would know.
Vigna has suggested a book to this particular executive just days prior to this deepfakes scam attack, so he asked the scammer pretending to be the Ferrari executive was the book was that he’d just recommended. The real answer was “Decalogue of Complexity: Acting, Learning and Adapting in the Incessant Becoming of the World by Alberto Felice De Toni” but the scammers realized they’d been caught and the call ended on the spot.
Be. Careful. Out. There.
Deepfakes technology in the hands of would-be scammers is a scary prospect. The world has already witnessed it in action with the $25.6 million debacle in Hong Kong. It’s unclear what these particular scammers were after or what they would have done had they gotten what they were seeking but this should serve as a lesson to everyone out there to build levels of redundancy in business whenever money is involved. And trust your instincts whenever important decisions are being made.