Binance warns of deepfake threat to KYC checks

Deepfakes used by scammers to bypass the KYC checks on crypto exchanges are becoming increasingly sophisticated. This was warned by Binance’s CSO Jimmy Su, Cointelegraph reports.

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According to him, there is a rise in the number of criminals employing the technology to bypass the exchange’s customer verification processes.

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\”The hacker will look for a normal photo of the victim somewhere on the Internet. Based on that, using deepfakes he can create videos to bypass the verification,\” Su said.

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The senior executive added that advanced tools can already respond correctly to audio prompts intended for real-time customer verification.

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\”Some checks require the user, for example, to blink with the left eye or look left, right, up or down. Deepfakes today are advanced enough to carry out these commands\”, he explained.

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However, Su is confident that at the current stage of development, fraudsters will not be able to fool the human operator.

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\”When we look at these videos, there are certain moments that are noticeable to the naked eye. … But AI will overcome them in time. So we cannot always rely on this,\” he concluded.

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Su also commented on a situation where hackers used a deepfake featuring the image of Binance’s CCO Patrick Hillmann in a series of Zoom calls with investors. According to him, this problem is hard to solve.

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\”There are videos that do not belong to us. So again, one thing is educating users,\” Su said.

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Binance plans to raise the topic of deepfakes in a series of educational blog posts focused on risk management.

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In May, representatives of the crypto exchange accused ChatGPT of spreading misinformation about CEO Changpeng Zhao.

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In November 2022, a deepfake of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried circulated on Twitter, where he offered compensation for the exchange’s collapse.