Singapore deepfake extortion plot could have sought to destabilise society, analysts say

SINGAPORE: The perpetrators of a deepfake email extortion plot in Singapore could have been seeking to destabilise society, beyond what appeared to be monetary motivations at a surface level, according to observers.

With a general election looming, the unidentified attackers could have also been betting on heightened caution among the political brass, the experts added.

They also warned that the same artificial intelligence-driven (AI) tactics could be employed by geopolitically-driven actors for more nefarious purposes.

On Thursday (Nov 28), the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) revealed that over 100 public servants from more than 30 government bodies, including Cabinet ministers, had received extortionary emails.

These contained doctored images with publicly sourced pictures of victims' faces superimposed on obscene screenshots of a man and a woman "purportedly in an intimate and compromising situation".

“FUELLING POLITICAL DISINFORMATION”

MDDI in its statement also noted that members of the Hong Kong Legislative Council had received similar emails earlier in the week.

“Singapore and Hong Kong are both small countries which are harmonious and the people are relatively trusting,” said Associate Professor Hannah Yee-Fen Lim, a law and computer science expert from Nanyang Technological University.

“The criminals may be wanting to capitalise on the perceived sense of trust to extort money more easily.”

S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) research fellow Muhammad Faizal Abdul Rahman said hostile actors could be trying to take advantage of an impending general election that Singapore must hold by November next year.

The perpetrators could have assumed that with the polls near, it “would make ministers and public servants more willing to pay, in order to save themselves and their institutions from reputational damage and embarrassment”, he said.

Mr Faizal noted that such bulk email extortion campaigns using compromising images point towards a trend observed in transnational crime.

But similar means could be employed by “hostile geopolitically motivated actors” or cybercriminals operating with impunity and not for profit – for the main goal of fuelling political disinformation, he warned.

Mr Benjamin Ang, who heads the Centre of Excellence for National Security at RSIS, said extortion was a “deeply personal” crime.

“Nobody wants such images of himself or herself to exist, even though they are fake,” he said.

Still, the case also demonstrates how the stability of Singapore society could be threatened by large-scale, technology-aided plots, he added.

As to whether the Singapore and Hong Kong incidents pointed to any foreign involvement, Mr Ang said “two sets of cases do not amount to a trend, so it is premature to impute any geopolitical motivations, without further evidence”.

“DARK SIDE” OF TECH

With emails being used to carry out the threats, authorities should be able to trace the perpetrators and their locations, said Assoc Prof Lim.

She believes the actors may actually be “less computer-savvy” than those in an earlier deepfake extortion plot in April, which involved several Members of Parliament receiving similarly manipulated photos but through physical snail mail.

CNA reached out to MDDI and the police for further comment.

Assoc Prof Lim pointed out that in the early days of the internet, a wave of online criminal activity in Australia - involving malware and scams - led to email addresses being removed from websites as a preventive measure.

But this is simply not possible now, given an increasingly digitalised world and how people have to be connected and contactable, she said.

“An extension of that is that the political office holders cannot even be seen to be uncontactable, because that would lead to them being perceived as unaccountable and lofty.”

For Mr Faizal, the plot is yet another exhibit of the scale at which hostile information operations are manipulating open-sourced images thanks to the democratisation of AI tools.

“While the genie can do many wonderful things, it is clear that it also has a dark side,” he said. “By now it is difficult to put it back in the bottle.”