Several European mayors, including those of Berlin and Madrid, were duped into believing they had a videoconference conversation with the mayor of Kiev, Vitaly Klitschko, which turned out to be a fake. This was revealed by the Ukrainian agency Ukrinform, picked up by various media, which reported a protest by Klitschko himself, who accused the Russians who invaded his country of practicing war on all fronts, “including that of spreading disinformation to put politicians Ukrainians in a bad light, pitting them against their Western partners with the aim of stopping Western aid to Ukraine ”.
The incriminated false conversations are the result of Deepfake technology, which through artificial intelligence allows you to replace people’s faces, expressions and voices with synthetic images, computer generated and modulated masks. The deceived European mayors, including the Madrid alcalde, José Luis Martinez-Almeida and Berlin-based Buergmeisterin Franziska Giffey, denounced the decoy was an invitation to a videoconference with Klitschko via a fake email address. “As our friends react quickly and support us, the mayors of Berlin and Madrid have agreed to talk to us. And with the help of Deepfake technology, the culprit talked to them pretending to be me, ”said the mayor of Kiev in his Telegram statement taken up by Ukrinform.
But the deception did not last long, at least in the case of Berlin: “There were no signs that the videoconference was not held with a real person,” said – quoted by the Guardian – Giffey, who held her videoconference on the Webex platform with a person who “had the face and voice” of Klitschko. But after about fifteen minutes the first suspicions surfaced, when the fake Klitschko started pointing the finger at Ukrainian war refugees who would cheat with the good faith of the Germans by unduly taking advantage of their social services, while they should be sent back to Ukraine at fight.
Taking advantage of a brief interruption in communication, the mayor contacted the Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin, who heard the Kiev authorities, confirming that there is no negotiation of the real mayor of the Ukrainian capital, according to the Spiegel reconstruction. Ukrainian anti-cyber services warn of possible new cases of online phishing, often carried by real Ukrainian sites but hacked without their knowledge and compromise.