However, one of the most vulnerable parts of any technological system is the incredibly glitchy organic matter with which it must interface. I know of one large financial institution that spent a nine-figure sum upgrading the defences of its cyber perimeter. It then paid ethical hackers to test the formidable new defences.
The hackers were inside the walls of the financial fortress within 17 minutes. How? They hired a beautiful young woman to tell an unwitting security guard she had forgotten her pass and could he, pretty please, give her a new one. Sure thing, love. Whoops.
Human beings and human behaviour are the financial system’s soft spots. Financial decision making is emotional and therefore exploitable. Fake pictures, internal documents or, even, leaked conversations could very easily create the impression that a bank is on the verge of collapse and spark wide-spread panic.
Many people now have multiple bank accounts. If they have cause to worry about the stability of one lender, it would cost them nothing to transfer their funds to another. It could, however, prove very expensive to do nothing.
Even those customers who are aware that the Financial Services Compensation Scheme protects deposits of up to £85,000 may worry about how long their money might be tied up and the hassle of claiming it. So why take the risk? Shah describes such decisions as having an “asymmetric cost function”.
If enough depositors think the same way, then a bank run becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, gathering unstoppable momentum in a matter of hours. Within a few more, the markets would be asking: who’s next?
Shah says there is already evidence of untraceable “dark PR” about financial institutions being perpetrated on the deep web and funded by cryptocurrencies. Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March last year, there was a spike in tweets and Reddit posts from bots targeting First Republic Bank, which ultimately failed and had to be taken over by JP Morgan.
The perpetrators behind such attacks could be short-sellers looking to profit from the fall in a bank’s share price. But they could just as easily be state-sponsored operators. Whoever’s behind them, they’re becoming increasingly sophisticated.
The three British personalities most likely to appear in deepfake videos on social media are Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt and Martin Lewis, the founder of MoneySavingExpert and one of the most trusted voices in the country, according to Shah.