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Deepfake

A deepfake is synthetic audio, image, or video generated by AI to make a real person appear to say or do something they never did, increasingly used to impersonate executives in fraud.

Updated 2 min read

How it works

With a few minutes of public audio or video, attackers can clone a voice or face well enough to pass on a call or in a short clip. They use it to back up a fraudulent request, such as a CFO "confirming" a wire transfer by phone, removing the last bit of doubt a victim might have.

Detection is hard and improving slowly, so process controls like callback verification matter as much as technology.

How it relates to brand impersonation

Deepfakes supercharge executive impersonation by adding a convincing voice or face to a request. The supporting infrastructure, such as fake profiles and lookalike domains, is still detectable and removable.

How nebty helps

nebty cannot stop a voice clone on a call, but it removes the fake profiles and lookalike domains that deepfake-backed scams rely on to look legitimate, and monitors for impersonation of your executives.

How to defend against deepfake fraud

You cannot reliably detect a good deepfake in the moment, so the defence has to be process, not eyesight. The single most effective control is out-of-band verification: any urgent request to move money or release data, even one that arrives by video call in a familiar voice, has to be confirmed through a separate, known channel before it is actioned. Agree a simple internal rule for it in advance, so nobody has to make the call under pressure. Limit how much executive audio and video is available to clone a voice by being deliberate about what gets published. And remember the scam still leans on ordinary infrastructure: the fake profiles, lookalike domains, and spoofed addresses that make the deepfake believable are detectable and removable, even when the synthetic media itself is not.

Executive impersonation is impersonating a company’s leaders, such as the CEO, CFO, or founders, to abuse their authority, typically to authorize fraudulent payments or extract sensitive information.

Impersonation

Digital impersonation is the broad practice of pretending to be a person or organization online. It covers both brand impersonation and the impersonation of individual executives or employees.

Impersonation

An impersonation attack is any attack where the adversary pretends to be a trusted brand, person, or system to deceive a target, the umbrella for phishing, fake profiles, spoofing, and business email compromise.

Impersonation

CEO fraud is a scam in which an attacker impersonates a company chief executive, usually by email, to order an urgent payment or data transfer that an employee carries out without checking.

Phishing & email

Vishing is voice phishing: a phone call or voicemail that impersonates a trusted organization or person to pressure the target into revealing information or making a payment.

Phishing & email

A fake social media account is a profile or page that copies a real brand, executive, or person to scam followers, run fake support, or post fraudulent offers under a borrowed identity.

Impersonation

Digital identity protection is the practice of safeguarding the online identity of a brand and its people from impersonation, misuse, and theft across the web and social platforms.

Brand protection & DRP

Whaling is a phishing attack aimed at senior executives, the most valuable targets, using highly tailored messages to trigger high-value actions like large wire transfers or the release of sensitive data.

Phishing & email
Free report

See who is impersonating your brand

The free nebty report scans the web for lookalike domains and fake profiles targeting your brand, with no obligation.

Benedikt Scheungraber

Benedikt Scheungraber

Co-Founder & CEO

Questions about brand protection, or want to see nebty in action? I’m happy to walk you through it myself and talk openly about whether we can help with your case.