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Mark Read, CEO of WPP, the largest global advertising and public relations
agency. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters
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Mark Read, CEO of WPP, the largest global advertising and public relations
agency. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters
Technology

This article is more than 6 months old


CEO OF WORLD’S BIGGEST AD FIRM TARGETED BY DEEPFAKE SCAM

This article is more than 6 months old

Exclusive: fraudsters impersonated WPP’s CEO using a fake WhatsApp account, a
voice clone and YouTube footage used in a virtual meet

Nick Robins-Early
Fri 10 May 2024 08.01 BSTLast modified on Fri 10 May 2024 17.31 BST
Share




The head of the world’s biggest advertising group was the target of an elaborate
deepfake scam that involved an artificial intelligence voice clone. The CEO of
WPP, Mark Read, detailed the attempted fraud in a recent email to leadership,
warning others at the company to look out for calls claiming to be from top
executives.

Fraudsters created a WhatsApp account with a publicly available image of Read
and used it to set up a Microsoft Teams meeting that appeared to be with him and
another senior WPP executive, according to the email obtained by the Guardian.
During the meeting, the impostors deployed a voice clone of the executive as
well as YouTube footage of them. The scammers impersonated Read off-camera using
the meeting’s chat window. The scam, which was unsuccessful, targeted an “agency
leader”, asking them to set up a new business in an attempt to solicit money and
personal details.


How to tell if an image is AI-generated
Read more

“Fortunately the attackers were not successful,” Read wrote in the email. “We
all need to be vigilant to the techniques that go beyond emails to take
advantage of virtual meetings, AI and deepfakes.”

A WPP spokesperson confirmed the phishing attempt bore no fruit in a statement:
“Thanks to the vigilance of our people, including the executive concerned, the
incident was prevented.” WPP did not respond to questions on when the attack
took place or which executives besides Read were involved.

Once primarily a concern related to online harassment, pornography and political
disinformation, the number of deepfake attacks in the corporate world has surged
over the past year. AI voice clones have fooled banks, duped financial firms out
of millions and put cybersecurity departments on alert. In one high-profile
example, an executive of the defunct digital media startup Ozy pleaded guilty to
fraud and identity theft after it was reported he used voice-faking software to
impersonate a YouTube executive in an attempt to fool Goldman Sachs into
investing $40m in 2021.

The attempted fraud on WPP likewise appeared to use generative AI for voice
cloning, but also included simpler techniques like taking a publicly available
image and using it as a contact display picture. The attack is representative of
the many tools that scammers now have at their disposal to mimic legitimate
corporate communications and imitate executives.

“We have seen increasing sophistication in the cyber-attacks on our colleagues,
and those targeted at senior leaders in particular,” Read said in the email.

Read’s email listed a number of bullet points to look out for as red flags,
including requests for passports, money transfers and any mention of a “secret
acquisition, transaction or payment that no one else knows about”.

“Just because the account has my photo doesn’t mean it’s me,” Read said in the
email.

WPP, a publicly traded company with a market cap of about $11.3bn, also stated
on its website that it had been dealing with fake sites using its brand name and
was working with relevant authorities to stop the fraud.

“Please be aware that WPP’s name and those of its agencies have been
fraudulently used by third parties – often communicating via messaging services
– on unofficial websites and apps,” a pop-up message on the company’s contact
page states.

Many companies are grappling with the boom of generative AI, pivoting resources
toward the technology while simultaneously facing its potential harms. WPP
announced last year that it was partnering with the chip-maker Nvidia to create
advertisements with generative AI, touting it as a sea change in the industry.

“Generative AI is changing the world of marketing at incredible speed. This new
technology will transform the way that brands create content for commercial
use,” Read said in a statement last May.

In recent years, low-cost audio deepfake technology has become widely available
and far more convincing. Some AI models can generate realistic imitations of a
person’s voice using only a few minutes of audio, which is easily obtained from
public figures, allowing scammers to create manipulated recordings of almost
anyone.

The rise of deepfake audio has targeted political candidates around the world,
but also crept into other less prominent targets. A school principal in
Baltimore was put on leave this year over audio recordings that sounded like he
was making racist and antisemitic comments, only for it to turn out to be a
deepfake perpetrated by one of his colleagues. Bots have impersonated Joe Biden
and former presidential candidate Dean Phillips.

Explore more on these topics
 * Technology
 * Artificial intelligence (AI)
 * Deepfake
 * WPP
 * Advertising
 * news

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