European MPs Targeted By Deepfake Video Calls Imitating Russian Opposition (theguardian.com) 16
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A series of senior European MPs have been approached in recent days by individuals who appear to be using deepfake filters to imitate Russian opposition figures during video calls. Those tricked include Rihards Kols, who chairs the foreign affairs committee of Latvia's parliament, as well as MPs from Estonia and Lithuania. Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the UK foreign affairs select committee, has also said he was targeted.
"Putin's Kremlin is so weak and frightened of the strength of @navalny they're conducting fake meetings to discredit the Navalny team," Tugendhat posted in a tweet, referring to the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. "They got through to me today. They won't broadcast the bits where I call Putin a murderer and thief, so I'll put it here." Kols uploaded a photograph of Leonid Volkov, an ally of Navalny, and a screenshot of his doppelganger taken from the video call. Volkov said the two looked virtually identical. "Looks like my real face -- but how did they manage to put it on the Zoom call? Welcome to the deepfake era " he wrote.
Kols said he had been approached by email by a person claiming to be Volkov and had held a short video-conference call with him, where they discussed support for Russian political prisoners and the Russian annexation of Crimea. Only later did he realise he may have been the victim of a hi-tech prank, he said. "Quite a painful lesson, but perhaps we can also say thanks to this fake Volkov for this lesson for us and Lithuanian and Estonian colleagues," he wrote. "It is clear that the so-called truth decay or post-truth and post-fact era has the potential to seriously threaten the safety and stability of local and international countries, governments and societies." Volkov accused a Russian duo named Vovan and Lexus, who regularly target western officials, of being behind the call.
"Putin's Kremlin is so weak and frightened of the strength of @navalny they're conducting fake meetings to discredit the Navalny team," Tugendhat posted in a tweet, referring to the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. "They got through to me today. They won't broadcast the bits where I call Putin a murderer and thief, so I'll put it here." Kols uploaded a photograph of Leonid Volkov, an ally of Navalny, and a screenshot of his doppelganger taken from the video call. Volkov said the two looked virtually identical. "Looks like my real face -- but how did they manage to put it on the Zoom call? Welcome to the deepfake era " he wrote.
Kols said he had been approached by email by a person claiming to be Volkov and had held a short video-conference call with him, where they discussed support for Russian political prisoners and the Russian annexation of Crimea. Only later did he realise he may have been the victim of a hi-tech prank, he said. "Quite a painful lesson, but perhaps we can also say thanks to this fake Volkov for this lesson for us and Lithuanian and Estonian colleagues," he wrote. "It is clear that the so-called truth decay or post-truth and post-fact era has the potential to seriously threaten the safety and stability of local and international countries, governments and societies." Volkov accused a Russian duo named Vovan and Lexus, who regularly target western officials, of being behind the call.
Re: (Score:1, Redundant)
Da, komrade!
Putting a brave face after he has been had (Score:2)
He is putting a brave face after he has been had - watch the whole thing. It is utterly hilarious.
Anti-deepfake. (Score:2)
Sounds like in a cat and mouse game, one needs deepfake detection technology to counter.
Re: (Score:1)
Or just beat them at their own game - create a believable deepfake of Putin having gay sex and use Russian tactics to disseminate it as far and wide as possible in Russia with a load of fake stories giving credence to it exactly as Russia did with pizzagate, then watch him get hoisted by his own petard.
Re: (Score:1)
One just needs to check where the communications are actually coming from, secured and encrypted, like DUHH. Reality ignorant knob head politician good at getting elected and crap and politics, thought they could make a name for themselves, inflate their political ego and they could bring down the entire Russian government. Just you typical idiot politician, all ego and bullshit. The damage now done to relations between those two countries, by that idiots big mouth, youch.
Navalny's support is entirely fabri
Processing power? (Score:2)
I was under the impression that deepfakes require significant processing power. That this is being done in real-time indicates significant resources, no?
Re: (Score:2)
I would say it is pretty easy if it wasn't done in realtime. This does make it sounds like it needed some more computing power behind it.
Re: (Score:2)
gpgv (Score:2)
It's bound to happen eventually--some sort of GPG-like public-private key verification of video authenticity will need to be used to guard against deepfake videos. To do it in real time will require codec support.
Signed video (Score:2)
We may need something like signed timestamps and segments of video so it’s clear the order was not tampered with, either.
A few years (decades?) ago I was playing with the concept of a signed copyright-track embedded into video, so material composed from multiple sources can be pinpointed to the proper rights holder and license. I imagine that something like this could be used to sign video, with the addition of some kind of verifiable timestamps, maybe even on the receivers side.
/. getting CIA royalties like Democracy Now? (Score:2)
The Navalny that's a fascist white supremacist? Who's just as fringe in Russia as Juan Guido is in Venezuela? I would say don't insult our intelligence with this crap, but lots of people like to eat that shit up around here. With a spoon. While yawning as Assange rots in a British supermax for revealing Bush's war crimes.