1 March 2024
– Russian involvement in deep fake video of Maria Ressa on Facebook
4 March 2024
Deep fake videos of celebrities promoting fraudulent Bitcoin solutions are on the rise. The purpose is to encourage viewers to enroll into fraudulent Bitcoin platforms, but the poorly crafted deep fake video of Maria Ressa promoting the crypto-currency scam “Bitcoin Method” had other motives as well.
Qurium’s investigation of the deep fake video and its dissemination lead to Russian controlled infrastructure used to set up cloned articles featuring the deep fake of Maria Ressa. The fake video was later disseminated to a Philippine audience as yet another attempt to discredit the awarded journalist.
The fake video was based on Ressa’s appearance in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from November 2022, where she was invited to discuss her insights about Democracy and freedom and the danger of living in a world dominated by social media. Ressa stated in the interview with Colbert that “a lie told a million times becomes a fact”.
The lack of accountability from those that disseminate fake information and those that silently support disinformation by financially benefiting from it and letting it thrive within their infrastructure plays in great favor for those involved in disinformation campaigns.
The deep fake of Ressa was published on Facebook on 6 February 2024 although Facebook’s parent company Meta implemented a prohibition on deep fakes already in 2020. Despite Meta’s rule work, deep fakes is a growing trend on Facebook and only a few weeks ago, the Oversight Board called on Meta to rewrite ‘incoherent’ rules against faked videos to improve the situation.
Qurium’s forensic report: Deep fake of Maria Ressa connected to Russian cyberscam network.
Rappler’s report: Russian scam network circulates Maria Ressa deepfake through Facebook, Microsoft’s Bing
Contacts
Digital forensics: Tord Lundström <t at virtualroad.org> Technical Director
Media: Clara Zid <info at virtualroad.org> Media and Outreach Manager