A ‘malign actor’ posing as a key Ukrainian official targeted a top US senator in a deepfake call last week, in an effort to extract sensitive information around Russia, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
Senator Ben Cardin — who chairs the US Foreign Relations Committee — has been a hardliner on Russia, calling for penalties against Moscow for human rights abuses, including by confiscating its assets to enable Ukraine’s recovery from an over two-year-long war.
The senator received an email last Thursday that seemed to be from former Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba requesting to connect for a Zoom call. When the senator joined the call, he saw a figure that looked and sounded like Kuleba, but who eventually began behaving in an uncharacteristic manner, NYT reported citing an emailed warning from Senate security officials.
Officials said the figure began asking “politically charged questions” about the US election in November. The deepfake also asked for the senator’s opinion on “sensitive foreign policy”, like whether he supported firing “long-range missiles into Russian territory?”
“I need to know your answer,” it said.
The questions made Senator Cardin suspicious, leading him to end the call and inform the US State Department, NYT reported. The department later confirmed that the caller was not Kuleba but a deepfake.
The incident comes after recent warnings from US intelligence officials that foreign actors like Russia, Iran and China were exploiting artificial intelligence to interfere in the November election or gather sensitive information. Russia is seen as generating the most of such content, NYT reported.
It added that it was still unclear whether Russia was behind the deepfake call, but that the information the deepfake tried to gather was “of particular interest” to Moscow.
The attempt to deceive Senator Cardin also came days after he called for a “loosening of restrictions” on Ukrainian use of US-provided weapons in Russia.
- Vishakha Saxena
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