Engineering firm Arup lost HK$200 million after falling victim to a deepfake video in which a digital clone of its chief financial officer demanded money be transferred.
The surreal video, generated using artificial intelligence, was targeted at employees at the international company's Hong Kong office in January.
According to British business newspaper the Financial Times, which reported the news this morning, it is “one of the world's biggest deepfake scams”.
“We can confirm that fake audio and images were used,” Arup told the Financial Times.
“Our financial stability and business operations have not been affected and our internal systems have not been compromised,” it added.
The investigation is ongoing.
Arup is an international engineering firm that has worked on landmark buildings such as Sagrada Familia, the world's longest sea bridge and the Sydney Opera House.
The scam reportedly began when staff in Arup's Hong Kong office received a message about a “confidential transaction” from someone believed to be Arup's UK-based CFO.
This resulted in a video conference call in which the fake CFO asked staff to make 15 transfers totalling HK$200 million (£20 million) to five Hong Kong bank accounts.
The elaborate deepfake video also impersonates several other employees at the company.
When the matter was reported to the group's headquarters, the targeted employee realised it was a scam.
Arup “reported a fraud case to police” in Hong Kong in January, and local authorities broke news of the incident in February, but did not initially name Arup as a victim.
Local police also said at the time that the worker was initially suspicious but was reassured when the other people in the video “looked and sounded exactly like colleagues he knew,” according to CNN.
So far, no arrests have been made and further details have not been released as the investigation is ongoing.
“Unfortunately, as this incident is still under investigation we are unable to provide further details at this stage,” an Arup spokesman told Design magazine.
Number of deepfake scams 'skyrocketing'
In a separate statement, Arup's global chief information officer, Rob Greig, said he hoped the fraud case would raise awareness of the threat, which he said was “exponentially growing.”
“Like many other businesses around the world, our business is subject to regular attacks, including invoice fraud, phishing scams, WhatsApp voice spoofing and deepfakes,” he told Design magazine.
“What we've seen is an exponential increase in the number and sophistication of these attacks over the past few months,” Greig added.
“This is an industry, business and societal issue, and we hope that our experience helps raise awareness of the increasingly sophisticated and evolving methods used by bad actors.”
Advertising agency WPP was also recently targeted in a deepfake scam, but was unsuccessful, according to the FT.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to become a hot topic in 2023 and was the focus of Dezeen's flagship editorial series, “AItopia.” As part of the series, a number of experts expressed their hopes and concerns about the technology.
Among them is LookX founder Wanyu He, who told Dezeen: “Only by embracing AI can we have a hand in controlling it.”
Photo by Thomas Lefebvre and Unsplash
