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VMware Report Warns of Deepfakes Attacks and Cyber Extortion

Artificial Intelligence, Deep fakes, deep fakes attack

Artificial Intelligence

Bengaluru, 9th August 2022 : At Black Hat USA 2022, VMware released its eighth annual Global Incident Response Threat Report, which takes a deep dive into the challenges faced by security teams amid pandemic disruptions, burnout, and geopolitically motivated cyberattacks. Sixty-five percent of defenders state that cyberattacks have increased since Russia invaded Ukraine, according to report findings. The report also shines a light on emerging threats such as deepfakes, attacks on APIs, and cybercriminals targeting incident responders themselves.

“Cybercriminals are now incorporating deepfakes into their attack methods to evade security controls,” said Rick McElroy, principal cybersecurity strategist at VMware. “Two out of three respondents in our report saw malicious deepfakes used as part of an attack, a 13% increase from last year, with email as the top delivery method. Cybercriminals have evolved beyond using synthetic video and audio simply for influence operations or disinformation campaigns. Their new goal is to use deepfake technology to compromise organizations and gain access to their environment.”

 

Additional key findings from the report include:

 

Fighting Back

“In order to defend against the broadening attack surface, security teams need an adequate level of visibility across workloads, devices, users and networks to detect, protect, and respond to cyber threats,” said Chad Skipper, global security technologist at VMware. “When security teams are making decisions based on incomplete and inaccurate data, it inhibits their ability to implement a granular security strategy, while their efforts to detect and stop lateral movement of attacks are stymied due to the limited context of their systems.”

Despite the turbulent threat landscape and rising threats detailed in the report, incident responders are fighting back with 87% saying that they are able to disrupt a cybercriminal’s activities sometimes (50%) or very often (37%). They’re also using new techniques to do so. Three-quarters of respondents (75%) say they are now deploying virtual patching as an emergency mechanism. In every case, the more visibility defenders have across today’s widening attack surface, the better equipped they’ll be to weather the storm.

See also: ESSAY: How to Detect and Respond to Fake News

Methodology

VMware conducted an online survey about trends in the incident response landscape in June 2022, and 125 cybersecurity and incident response professionals from around the world participated. Percentages in certain questions exceed 100 percent because respondents were asked to check all that apply. Due to rounding, percentages in all questions may not add up to 100 percent. To read last year’s report, please visit Global Incident Response Threat Report: Manipulating Reality.

Download the full report.

This story was updated on 16 August 2022. Images from the infographic were added. 

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