Deepfake Attacks Strike Every Five Minutes Amid 244% Surge in Digital Document Forgeries

November 19, 2024 at 00:00 AM EST

Processing millions of verifications annually, the Entrust Onfido solution has prevented an estimated $5.5 billion in fraud; the 2025 Identity Fraud Report examines AI’s role in rising cyber-attacks and advises businesses on protection

The Entrust Cybersecurity Institute today released findings from its 2025 Identity Fraud Report. As cyber criminals continue to adapt their techniques to find new ways through defenses, AI-assisted fraud is growing increasingly sophisticated and frequent, as evidenced by the global report. The findings reveal a deepfake attack happened every five minutes in 2024, while digital document forgeries increased 244% year-over-year.

Digital identity verification is a vital part of the onboarding process, essential for preventing fraud and financial crime. This first moment of interaction provides organizations with the opportunity to establish trust in an individual’s identity from day one. Now in its sixth year, the annual report shares insights gained on the state of remote identity fraud at onboarding over the past year to understand today’s rapidly evolving fraud landscape. The report identifies digital document manipulation and deepfakes as the biggest growing threats going into 2025.

Key findings from the 2025 Identity Fraud Report include:

Digital Over Physical: The New Era of Document Fraud Emerges

For the first time, digital document forgery surpassed physical counterfeits as the leading method of fraud in 2024, with digital forgeries accounting for 57% of all document fraud. This marks a 244% increase from 2023 and a staggering 1,600% surge since 2021 when almost all fraudulent documents were physical counterfeits. With the rise in AI-assisted fraud, bad actors are now able to leverage more sophisticated attacks on documents, particularly National ID Cards (40.8% of attacks globally). Threat actors are taking advantage of “as-a-service” platforms for phishing, fraud, and ransomware that facilitate knowledge sharing of “best practices” and the use of generative AI (GenAI) tools to create sophisticated digital forgery and injection attacks.

Basic fraud tactics give way to sophisticated, hyper-realistic deepfakes

The report identifies AI-assisted deepfakes as an area of particular concern for global organizations, as basic fraud tactics that are relatively easy to discern, like phishing, are quickly giving way to hyper-realistic AI-generated deepfakes and synthetic identities. The rise in face-swap apps and GenAI tools has allowed fraudsters to perform and scale increasingly believable biometric fraud attacks. The capacity for malicious usage is widespread and includes fraudulent account openings, account takeovers, phishing scams, and misinformation campaigns. Deepfake attacks occurred at a rate of one every five minutes in 2024.

Financial services become top target for bad actors

The top three most targeted industries in 2024 were all related to financial services, with cryptocurrency seeing almost double the number of fraud attempts compared to any other industry (9.5%), followed by lending and mortgages (5.4%), and traditional banks (5.3%). Crypto platforms saw the highest rate of fraudulent activity attempts, which have risen 50% year-over-year, from 6.4% in 2023 to 9.5% in 2024. This could be due to Crypto reaching an all-time price high in 2024, making it very attractive to fraudsters. At the same time, traditional banks experienced a 13% increase from last year in fraudulent onboarding attempts, which happened as inflation rates were also high, leading to a rise in lending and mortgage scams.

“The drastic shift in the global fraud landscape, marked by a significant rise in sophisticated, AI-powered attacks, is a warning that all business leaders must heed,” said Simon Horswell, Senior Fraud Specialist at Entrust. “This year’s data underscores this alarming trend, highlighting how fraudsters are rapidly evolving their techniques. These threats are pervasive, touching every facet of business, government, and individuals alike. To stay ahead, security teams must proactively adapt their strategies, prioritize monitoring these emerging threats, and prepare their organizations to face this new reality. It's no longer optional; it's imperative."

Download the full 2025 Identity Fraud Report to learn more.

Methodology

The 2025 Identity Fraud Report serves as a guide to global identity fraud trends and techniques threatening businesses in 2025. Through the Onfido digital identity verification solution, Entrust processes millions of identity verifications each year across 195 countries. The report shares insights gained on the state of remote identity fraud over the past year, based on analysis of data collected from September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2024. Data has been normalized by client and industry distribution.

About Entrust

Entrust is an innovative leader in identity-centric security solutions, providing an integrated platform of scalable, AI-enabled security offerings. We enable organizations to safeguard their operations, evolve without compromise, and protect their interactions in an interconnected world – so they can transform their businesses with confidence. Entrust supports customers in 150+ countries and works with a global partner network. We are trusted by the world’s most trusted organizations. Learn more at www.entrust.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241118521944/en/

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Ken Kadet

+1 952-988-1154

ken.kadet@entrust.com

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Deepfake Attacks Strike Every Five Minutes Amid 244% Surge in Digital Document Forgeries

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