The Voice of Fraud: Deepfake Vishing and the New Age of Social Engineering - Group-IB

Recent advancements in AI voice cloning and weaknesses in telecom systems have led to increased deepfake vishing attacks. Cybercriminals are now able to combine cloned voices with caller ID spoofing to impersonate trusted executives or officials. With readily available audio, fraudsters can create convincing voice replicas at minimal cost.

What happened

Group-IB and Channel News Asia (CNA) conducted an experiment where a journalist’s voice was cloned using an online platform. The test demonstrated how quickly and cheaply realistic deepfake voices can be generated, highlighting the increasing risks to businesses and individuals. The experiment exposes the urgent need for stronger identity verification and defenses against AI-driven social engineering.