The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) has warned of a possible increase in so-called “deepfakes” and other artificial intelligence-generated bogus videos.
Testifying at a joint hearing by the House Committee on Information and Communications and the Committee on Public Information, DICT Undersecretary Jeffrey Ian Dy said “cognitive warfare is now more advanced because they can mimic actual personalities.
“This is the use of fake news or disinformation in order to shape people’s opinion,” Dy stressed.
“There are news reporters who endorse a certain product using his video. They even dub audio recording in the video to make it look like that they are endorsing a particular product when in fact they do not,” Dy explained.
“We believe that especially with the upcoming elections, this particular threat might increase, and we might be unable to cope with the volume of the expected influx of requests to take down AI-generated false statements and false news,” he added.
“Na-obserbahan ko, wala pa tayong batas sa deep fakes, malapit na pong mag-eleksyon, dapat gumawa tayo ng batas tungkol dito para mapagbawalan o ma-regulate ang paggamit ng AI (I have observed that we do not have a law on deep fakes. With the elections coming up, we need to craft a law regulation the use of AI),” cybersecurity analyst Art Samaniego Jr. said.
The DICT said victims of deepfakes can reach out to the agency and the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Council so they can take down the illicit online material.
The DICT also cited as having urged the public to scrutinize the videos and photos they see online, especially those from suspicious accounts.
Samaniego underscored the need to educate the public on the risks of cyberattacks, and how to stay safe online. He advised the government to invest in research and the acquisition of new cybersecurity technologies and solutions.
Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez has called for a briefing from the DICT amid recent cyberattacks on several Philippine government websites supposedly by Chinese hackers.
The breaches have targeted domains such as the cabsec.gov.ph, coastguard.gov.ph, cpbrd.congress.gov.ph, dict.gov.ph, doj.gov.ph,
ncws.gov.ph, and the private domain of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
The DICT said there is evidence suggesting that the perpetrators may have operated through Chinese networks, but there is no evidence directly linking the incidents to the Chinese government.
“Investigation showed that the attackers have multiple IP addresses coming from cnc.net, which is located in China. OWWA (Overseas Workers Welfare Administration) detected a total of 17,144 attempts from January alone, coming from multiple Chinese IP addresses,” Dy said.
“Our investigation currently holds circumstantial evidence suggesting that alleged perpetrators may have operated through Chinese networks and utilized tactics, techniques and procedures associated with known Chinese advanced persistent threat actors. However, it is crucial to
understand that at this stage, we lack direct evidence conclusively linking these incidents to be having the authorization of the Chinese government,” he said.