Fascinating stats by @ProfPaulRalph on reviewer reliability and the experiment run at @ConfEASE’23! 📉 #ease2023

The FBI released a warning on deepfakes for sextortion attacks - blackmailing someone with a fake sexual photo of you/your family member and being asked to pay up to take it down. www-bleepingcomputer-com.cdn… Now with AI powered tools, bad actors can generate thousands of such content daily. Even if a small % of victims pay up, there is enough financial incentive for the bad actor to conduct this attack. Using fake images for sextortion is the same as a computer ransomware, which will lock any computer it gets its hands on and demand money/btc to get back the file. The more computers the ransomware can reach, the more money it makes. The most common counter-argument to this is this is no different than using Photoshop. However, I argue that the economics behind AI-powered fakes are indeed is completely different from using Photoshop: (1) Volume: AI digital tools allow manipulation and sextortion at a scale that wasn't possible before. It's a numbers game - the more people a bad actor can target, the higher their chance of success and ranson.  Yes, bad actors created fake images before such tools existed, but now, they can directly target an incredibly high number of potential victims. (2) Speed: The time taken to create such fakes is reducing. With photoshop, it would take a bad actor hours to create a blackmail photo. Now it takes minutes, and it can even be competely automated. (3) Access: Photoshop requires some level of skill. With these tools and more coming, anyone can do it. What do you think?

Halifax Fire had warned that 3 subdivisions evacuated in Tantallon fire were built with ‘inadequate water sources to fight fires’ halifaxexaminer.ca/governmen… by me