Facebook has announced plans to ban deepfake videos.

In a blog post, Monika Bickert, the company’s vice-president for global policy management, acknowledged that “while these videos are still rare on the internet, they present a significant challenge for our industry and society as their use increases.”

Bickert said that “misleading manipulated media” will be removed if it has been edited or synthesized – beyond adjustments for clarity or quality – in ways that aren’t apparent to an average person and would likely mislead someone into thinking that a subject of the video said words that they did not actually say. Videos will also be removed if they are the product of AI or machine learning that merges, replaces or superimposes content onto a video, making it appear to be authentic.

“This policy does not extend to content that is parody or satire, or video that has been edited solely to omit or change the order of words,” Bickert said. “This approach is critical to our strategy and one we heard specifically from our conversations with experts.

“If we simply removed all manipulated videos flagged by fact-checkers as false, the videos would still be available elsewhere on the internet or social media ecosystem. By leaving them up and labelling them as false, we’re providing people with important information and context.”

Jake Moore, cybersecurity specialist at ESET, said that deepfakes are increasingly more difficult to spot, and AI is required to help detect them. “Fake videos of famous or powerful people can be extremely manipulative, causing extremely damaging effects in some cases. It is a bold claim from Facebook to ban all such false videos from their platform, as the software used to recognize them is still in its immature phase and requires more research to be effective. 

“Most videos are altered in some way before they land on social media so there is the potential of teething problems with false positives- or even letting a number of genuine deepfakes slip through the net. Not only do we need better software to recognize these digitally manipulated videos, we also need to make people aware that we are moving towards a time where we shouldn’t always believe what we see.”

Facebook has been involved with deepfake detection, launching the Deep Fake Detection Challenge last year, and partnering with Reuters to help media identify deepfakes and manipulated media through a free online training course. 

UK government intelligence experts are investigating whether an ‘outage’ at the London Stock Exchange (LSE) last August may have been caused by a cyber-attack, it has emerged.

People familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that GCHQ’s inquiries focus around the August 16 incident, which was described by the LSE at the time as “a technical software issue” which affected trading in FTSE 100 and 250 stocks, among others.

This led to one of the stock exchange’s worst outages in eight years, delaying the start of trading by over 90 minutes.

GCHQ reportedly wants to know whether hackers may have been able to take advantage of what was an IT system update at the time to disrupt markets.

Cyber-threats are listed in the group’s annual report as one of the LSE’s primary operational risks, with ransomware, data theft, DDoS and cloud computing all mentioned by name.

“The group’s technology and operational support providers, internal and third-party, could suffer a security breach resulting in the loss or compromise of sensitive information (both internal and external) or loss of services. Such a breach could materialize as a result of weaknesses in system controls or processes, or through the inadvertent or malicious actions of employees, contractors or vendors,” it added.

“A major information security breach that results in data and intellectual property loss, system unavailability or sensitive data leakage, could have a significant negative impact on our reputation, financial results and the confidence of our clients and could lead to fines and regulatory censure.”

For its part, the LSE has maintained that the incident was the result of a software configuration issue following an upgrade.

“London Stock Exchange takes its commitment to run orderly markets for its members seriously and has thoroughly investigated the root cause of the issue to mitigate against any future incidents,” a spokesperson told the paper.

The UK Treasury is also said to be involved in the investigation.

A US fundraising firm has been forced to close its doors after more than 60 years in business following a crippling ransomware attack in October.

The Heritage Company, based in Sherwood, Arkansas, let its 300 employees go just before Christmas, according to local reports.

“Unfortunately, approximately two months ago our Heritage servers were attacked by malicious software that basically ‘held us hostage for ransom’ and we were forced to pay the crooks to get the key just to get our systems back up and running,” explained CEO Sandra Franecke in a December message to employees.

“Since then, IT has been doing everything they can to bring all our systems back up, but they still have quite a long way to go. Also, since then, I have been doing my utmost best to keep our doors open, even going as far as paying your wages from my own money to keep us going until we could recoup what we lost due to the cyber-attack.”

The ransomware took out the firm’s accounting systems and mail center so it had no way of processing and receiving funds and sending statements out, she added.

The firm, which describes itself as “the premiere and most experienced professional tele-fundraiser in the nation,” is still hopeful this is not the end of the road after six decades in business.

“The ONLY option we had at this time was to close the doors completely or suspend our services until we can regroup and reorganize and get our systems running again. Of course, we chose to suspend operations as Heritage is a company that doesn’t like to give up,” said Franecke.

The incident is a timely reminder of the impact ransomware can have on small- and medium-sized businesses reliant on mission critical IT systems, but which have fewer resources or know-how to mitigate the risk of cyber-attacks.

“It would be easy to say that it wasn’t ransomware which brought about the apparent demise of The Heritage Company, but instead a lack of secure backups and a resilient disaster recovery plan,” observed security expert Graham Cluley.

Cybersecurity company Imperva today announced the appointment of Pam Murphy as CEO, effective immediately.

Murphy will take over from interim CEO Charles Goodman, who will continue to serve as chairman of the board.

Murphy brings a wealth of experience to her new role, having previously served as COO of Infor and operated across multiple leadership positions at Oracle and Andersen Consulting and Arthur Andersen.

“Imperva offers incredible solutions that help our customers navigate the complex and dynamic world of security, risk and compliance, while at the same time enabling progressive business transformation in an increasingly challenging marketplace,” Murphy said. “I’m looking forward to building on the foundation laid by our outstanding leadership team and capitalizing on Imperva’s market-leading products. Our relentless focus on our customers and their needs will always come first as we seize the many opportunities that lie ahead and significantly grow the business both domestically and internationally.” 

Goodman added: “We’re excited to have Pam join us on our mission to protect critical assets from cyber-criminals’ ever-changing attacks. As an accomplished executive who has led operations for some of the world’s largest software companies, and demonstrated ability to deliver customer value on a massive scale, she is perfectly positioned to lead Imperva through our next phase of growth.”