{"id":51756,"date":"2025-08-08T02:54:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T02:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/51756\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T02:54:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T02:54:11","slug":"heres-how-deepfake-vishing-attacks-work-and-why-they-can-be-hard-to-detect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/51756\/","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s how deepfake vishing attacks work, and why they can be hard to detect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By now, you\u2019ve likely heard of fraudulent calls that use AI to clone the voices of people the call recipient knows. Often, the result is what sounds like a grandchild, CEO, or work colleague you\u2019ve known for years reporting an urgent matter requiring immediate action, saying to wire money, divulge login credentials, or visit a malicious website.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dhs.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/publications\/increasing_threats_of_deepfake_identities_0.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">government officials<\/a> have been warning of the threat for years, with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cisa.gov\/news-events\/alerts\/2023\/09\/12\/nsa-fbi-and-cisa-release-cybersecurity-information-sheet-deepfake-threats\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">saying<\/a> in 2023 that threats from deepfakes and other forms of synthetic media have increased \u201cexponentially.\u201d Last year, Google\u2019s Mandiant security division <a href=\"https:\/\/cloud.google.com\/blog\/topics\/threat-intelligence\/ai-powered-voice-spoofing-vishing-attacks\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reported<\/a> that such attacks are being executed with \u201cuncanny precision, creating for more realistic phishing schemes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Anatomy of a deepfake scam call<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday, security firm Group-IB <a href=\"https:\/\/www.group-ib.com\/blog\/voice-deepfake-scams\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">outlined<\/a> the basic steps involved in executing these sorts of attacks. The takeaway is that they\u2019re easy to reproduce at scale and can be challenging to detect or repel.<\/p>\n<p>            <a data-pswp-width=\"1680\" data-pswp-height=\"805\" data-cropped=\"false\" href=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/deepfake-vishing-workflow.webp\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"cursor-zoom-in\" data-pswp- rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><br \/>\n              <img width=\"1024\" height=\"491\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/deepfake-vishing-workflow-1024x491.webp.webp\" class=\"center large\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"  \/><br \/>\n            <\/a><\/p>\n<p>              The workflow of a deepfake vishing attack.<\/p>\n<p>\n                  Credit:<br \/>\n                                      Group-IB\n                                  <\/p>\n<p>\n      The workflow of a deepfake vishing attack.<\/p>\n<p>          Credit:<\/p>\n<p>          Group-IB<\/p>\n<p>The basic steps are:<\/p>\n<p>Collecting voice samples of the person who will be impersonated. Samples as short as three seconds are sometimes adequate. They can come from videos, online meetings, or previous voice calls.<\/p>\n<p>Feeding the samples into AI-based speech-synthesis engines, such as Google\u2019s Tacotron 2, Microsoft\u2019s Vall-E, or services from ElevenLabs and Resemble AI. These engines allow the attacker to use a text-to-speech interface that produces user-chosen words with the voice tone and conversational tics of the person being impersonated. Most services bar such use of deepfakes, but as Consumer Reports <a href=\"https:\/\/www.consumerreports.org\/media-room\/press-releases\/2025\/03\/consumer-reports-assessment-of-ai-voice-cloning-products\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">found in March<\/a>, the safeguards these companies have in place to curb the practice could be bypassed with minimal effort.<\/p>\n<p>An optional step is to spoof the number belonging to the person or organization being impersonated. These sorts of techniques have been in use for decades.<\/p>\n<p>Next, attackers initiate the scam call. In some cases, the cloned voice will follow a script. In other more sophisticated attacks, the faked speech is generated in real time, using voice masking or transformation software. The real-time attacks can be more convincing because they allow the attacker to respond to questions a skeptical recipient may ask.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlthough real-time impersonation has been demonstrated by open source projects and commercial APIs, real-time deepfake vishing in-the-wild remains limited,\u201d Group-IB said. \u201cHowever, given ongoing advancements in processing speed and model efficiency, real-time usage is expected to become more common in the near future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By now, you\u2019ve likely heard of fraudulent calls that use AI to clone the voices of people the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-51756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}