Kaspersky: Deepfake services now 400 times cheaper

Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) has discovered ads on the darknet offering services to create deepfake content in real time, for video and audio recordings.

Prices reportedly start at USD 50 for fake videos and USD 30 for fake voice messages, and increase depending on the complexity and duration of the material.

Kaspersky came to this conclusion by analyzing multiple platforms in Russian and English.

Kaspersky has previously identified services for creating deepfake material on the darknet whose prices ranged from USD 300 to USD 20,000 per minute.

The current ads allow malicious actors to generate fake audio and video content in real time at a significantly lower cost.

The ads mention several options, including live face swapping during video calls on video conferencing platforms or in chat apps, face swapping for verification purposes, and face swapping in video feeds from the device’s camera.

The ads claim they can provide software that synchronizes the facial expressions of a person in a video with text, even in foreign languages, as well as tools for voice cloning and adjusting the tone and timbre of the voice to convey specific emotions.

However, it is highly likely that many of these ads are scams designed to mislead potential buyers.

“Not only are we seeing ads offering ‘deepfake-as-a-service,’ but we are also noticing a clear demand for these tools. Malicious actors are actively experimenting with AI and incorporating it into their activities. Some platforms are also offering more sophisticated capabilities, such as malicious Large Language Models (LLMs) created entirely from scratch, independent of publicly available models, and running locally. While these technologies do not introduce fundamentally new cyber threats, they can significantly improve the capabilities of attackers. In this context, cybersecurity professionals have a lot to do to address these challenges. One of the most promising ways to achieve this is to use AI to increase the productivity of security teams and the effectiveness of defensive measures,” comments Dmitry Galov, Head of Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team in Russia and the CIS.

To stay safe, Kaspersky recommends:

• Ensure that your company has effective cybersecurity measures in place, not only protective solutions, but also qualified IT professionals. Use Kaspersky Threat Intelligence to identify threats that could impact your business.

• Make sure your employees understand what deepfake content is and why it poses a serious threat, and provide regular training to recognize it. The Kaspersky Automated Security Awareness platform can help raise digital literacy.

• Teach your staff to recognize key signs of deepfake material: jerky movements, inconsistent lighting between frames, unnatural skin tones, unusual or absent blinking, image distortion, and videos that are intentionally recorded in low quality or in poor lighting.

Kaspersky

Kaspersky

Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Team

GReAT

Dmitry Galov

cyber security

dark net

fake messages

artificial intelligence