The Emergence of Deepfakes as a Cyber Threat

The term deepfakes originated from a combination of deep learning and fake and was created around 2017 with the introduction of videos in which the face of a person was transposed over a body resulting in an individual appearing to perform activities which they did not perform. Threat actors not only use deepfakes to manipulate operations and spread disinformation but they have begun to make use of deepfakes to illicitly gain access to computing infrastructure of organizations. Several critical issues are presented to organizations and individuals through malicious activities performed by deepfakes. Deepfakes can be used to place a victim in a vulnerable circumstance which can inflict reputational damage and be used as a trigger for performing blackmail. Malicious actors can feed the population of a country's political propaganda to confuse the populous with ill intentions. Synthetic videos of political candidates can be produced to meddle with the elections. Identification information can be counterfeited to facilitate the theft or fraudulent opening of financial accounts. Synthetic videos or audio recordings can be produced to mimic an organization's executives to harm the reputation of the executive or the company itself. Fabricated information can be propagated regarding an organization or its goods or services to influence consumers to reduce purchases or cause the organization legal problems. An organization could be confronted with legal issues if they are victimized by deepfake related attacks. This research paper will concentrate on the aforementioned instances that are related to information security.