Ferrari Thwarted an AI Deepfake Scammer Posing as Its CEO With an Age-Old Trick

Like a scene out of a 1980s sci-fi movie, a deepfake scammer who tried to bamboozle Ferrari last week was thwarted by the simplest of all imposter tests: the personal question. There are countless movies where the villain is somehow able to impersonate a protagonist and, inevitably, there’s a moment when another good guy has to tell them apart. To do so, our hero almost always asks a personal question—one that only the real protagonist would know. It never fails. And that’s exactly what one Ferrari executive did when a scammer messaged them posing as the company’s CEO.

According to Bloomberg, the scammer reached out to a Ferrari exec through WhatsApp pretending to be Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna. The scammer reportedly asked “Hey, did you hear about the big acquisition we’re planning? I could need your help.” While the WhatsApp number and photo were different than the real Vigna’s, the exec seemingly kept the conversation going, as the messages continued.

The scammer kicked things up a notch when they called the exec, using AI deepfake technology to mimic Vigna’s voice and even his southern Italian accent. According to the Ferrari exec, the deepfake accent was nearly perfect. However, the exec couldn’t shake the feeling that something fishy was going on, so they told the scammer that they needed to verify the caller’s identity. To do this, they asked what book Vigna recently recommended to them. The title was “Decalogue of Complexity: Acting, Learning and Adapting in the Incessant Becoming of the World” by Alberto Felice De Toni. Of course, the scammer didn’t know that—so they promptly hung up.

Following the exec’s sleuth-like questioning, Ferrari opened an internal investigation. What was the scammer after? Money, of course. Apparently, the fake Benedetto Vigna wanted to discuss a “China-related deal” that supposedly required a currency-hedge transaction. That’s what tipped the unnamed executive off, prompting the book question.

This type of corporate deepfake scam seems to be getting popular, as a company in Hong Kong was just tricked into sending $25 million to a scammer after an employee was duped with similar tactics. Thankfully, due to the Ferrari exec’s quick thinking, they were able to save the Italian supercar maker from both a massive financial loss as well as worldwide embarrassment.

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