Somali Magazine October 18. 2023- Moussa Faki the Chairperson of the African Union Commission recently fell victim to cybercrime after scammers used artificial intelligence to impersonate him.
It’s a tradition for the Secretariat of the African Union to often write to world leaders whenever Mr. Faki, the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, has to make a call to global leaders.
The customary for the African Union leadership demands that a request meetings with officials from other nations or international organizations in writing, known technically as a note verbale.
However, these con artists impersonated him and made a number of video calls to European cities while pretending to be looking to set up meetings.
Reportedly, the hackers also used phony email accounts to pose as the organization’s deputy chief of staff in an effort to set up phone meetings between foreign leaders and Mr. Faki.
Then, using elaborate phony video adjustments to pass as the chairwoman, the pranksters held video conversations with a number of European leaders, according to Mr. Faki’s spokesman, Ebba Kalondo.
The AUC reiterated that it exclusively communicates with foreign governments through their Embassies in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, and expressed its “regret” for these instances in a statement released on Friday.“The African Union Commission reiterates its strict adherence to diplomatic protocol and exclusive usage of Note Verbale for high-level engagement requests,” Ms Kalondo said via Social media-X, formerly Twitter.
It’s not yet unclear what the imposters’ motivations were, the AU statement called their fraudulent emails “phishing,” a sign that they may have wanted to steal digital identities in order to access restricted information.
Deep Fake Hacking Technique
This is the most rampant technique used by cybercriminals, is frequently employed by various organizations to disseminate propaganda and false information.
They entail creating a film of someone doing or saying something they haven’t actually done utilizing their picture, voice, and attributes using artificial intelligence algorithms