TL;DR: Digital crime is becoming more scalable and convincing as fraudsters use generative AI to automate phishing, impersonate trusted individuals, and manipulate identity verification systems. Businesses must prepare for increasingly sophisticated presentation attacks and deepfakes. Layered identity verification is essential for detecting fraud.
2024 has seen a global spike in digital fraud. Businesses and individuals alike facing an evolving threat that has begun to snowball out of control. AI has empowered fraudsters to create highly deceptive false identities. They also leverage technologies such as deepfakes to commit sophisticated presentation attacks during customer onboarding processes. This leads to often severe financial consequences. With 2025 on the horizon, what kinds of digital crime must businesses brace themselves for? What can they do to fortify their defenses?
Several key forms of digital crime will dominate fraud attempts in the year to come. This includes increasingly sophisticated deepfakes, social media fraud, generative AI-led phishing attacks, compromised identities, and more. In addition, as technologies like generative AI become simpler to use, the number of bad actors continues to increase. The barrier to entry in terms of committing fraudulent attacks has substantially lowered, with tools like DeepFakeLab publicly available for anyone to create a chosen deepfake.
Digital Crime with Sophisticated Presentation Attacks: Deepfakes
Deepfake presentation attacks are no longer a rare occurrence. Several tools are available online that anyone can use to create one. However, their prevalence online has drastically increased over the past few years. Deloitte reported a 700% increase in deepfake incidents in fintech in 2023 alone.
By 2026, 30% of organizations will view their existing authentication or digital ID systems as insufficient for combating deepfake threats.
A 2024 Ofcom report revealed that 60% of people in the UK have come across at least one deepfake. Additionally, Gartner predicts that by 2026, 30% of organizations will view their existing authentication or digital ID systems as insufficient for combating deepfake threats.
Akif Khan, VP Analyst at Gartner, states “In the past decade, several inflection points in fields of AI have occurred that allow for the creation of synthetic images. These artificially generated images of real people’s faces, known as deepfakes, can be used by malicious actors to undermine biometric authentication or render it inefficient,. As a result, organizations may begin to question the reliability of identity verification and authentication solutions, as they will not be able to tell whether the face of the person being verified is a live person or a deepfake.”
Today, humans are already often unable to differentiate a deepfake from a live person. This is why organisations must begin to heavily invest in state-of-the-art liveness detection software. Liveness detection technologies can identify deepfakes. They do this by analysing skin texture, subtle micro expressions, and more that are undetectable to the human eye or to simple identity verification processes.
Social Media Platforms As The New Playground For Cyber Crime
Beyond streamlining identity verification practices, the eID scheme also lays a strong foundation. It’s already common knowledge that social media platforms are where many modern crimes begin. For example, Facebook admitting to having removed 700 million fake social media accounts in the fourth quarter of 2023. This was after having removed 827 million in the previous quarter. Undoubtedly, in 2025, this trend will continue as the amount of social media users continues to increase.
As a result, generative AI tools will also enable fraudsters to carry out impersonation attacks to a higher standard. This puts social media users at a higher risk of becoming victims of practices such as catfishing and pig-butchering scams. Advanced language models like Chat GPT can generate text that mimics someone’s writing style, enabling fraudsters to impersonate an individual over messages or posts. Similarly, AI can be utilised to automatically create a large number of fake accounts on social media platforms, using profiles with realistic-sounding names, pictures and backgrounds.
Almost 80% of scams start online.
A Lloyds spokesperson recently spoke to The Sunday Times, stating that “Almost 80% of scams start online, and we have long called for social media and tech companies to do more to protect their users and help refund innocent victims.”
So far, we have not seen social media platforms fully implement the necessary safety controls. It couldn’t be any easier to set up an Instagram or Facebook account under a false identity. However, if these platforms implemented tighter registration processes with proof of identity as a requirement, then fraud cases would decline.
Case Study: Deepfake Videos Impersonate the Bank of England Governor
In June 2026, fraudulent videos circulated online depicting Bank of England’s Andrew Bailey in fabricated scenes involving political figures. Bailey confirmed that the videos were fake and warned that they were being used to defraud members of the public.
Public Verification and Layered Identity Controls for Digital Crime Attacks
The Bank of England publicly confirmed that the content was fraudulent and encourage people with relevant information to report it. They also acknowledged that identifying those responsible was difficult. For businesses, the incident shows why video, images, and voices should not be treated as standalone proof of identity.
Outcomes
- The videos were publicly identified as fake.
- The incident promuted an official warning about presentation attacks and deepfake-enabled fraud.
- The case exposed the difficulty of identifying perpetrators.
Generative AI-Supporting Phishing Attacks
AI-enhanced phishing threats take many forms. Examples include emails generated with flawless grammar and inclusion of personal details to highly adaptive malware that can learn and evade detection systems. This next generation of phishing attacks will leverage AI’s ability to learn from real-time data. They can adapt in response to evolving security measures, thus making detection even more challenging.
As well as the quality of phishing attacks increasing, the quantity of these attacks is also bound to increase with the help of generative AI. Generative AI will allow for thousands of targeted phishing attacks to be carried out simultaneously without compromising the targeted customization for maximum effect. Large-scale operations will be carried out by fraudsters, with much higher chances of success. Furthermore, as committing fraud becomes easier with the help of AI and less technical expertise is needed, more fraudsters will begin to emerge.
Research we published earlier this year showed that 60% of participants fell victim to artificial intelligence (AI)-automated phishing, which is comparable to the success rates of non-AI-phishing messages created by human experts. ~ Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review published research in early 2024 that highlighted the far higher success rate of AI-enhanced phishing emails, with 60% of participants falling victim to these scams. They state, “Perhaps even more worryingly, our new research demonstrates that the entire phishing process can be automated using LLMs, which reduces the costs of phishing attacks by more than 95% while achieving equal or greater success rates.” This suggests that phishing attacks will improve not just in quality but in quantity, with a vast quantity of attacks carried out worldwide across all industries.
Digital Crime Attacks on Supply Chains:
As we move into 2025, supply chain attacks are expected to become more sophisticated. Cybercriminals are targeting smaller, less secure vendors to gain access to larger organizations. These attacks may involve AI-driven fraud, ransomware, data exfiltration, and even disrupting critical infrastructure. The National Cyber Security Centre in the UK states, “In recent years, there’s been a significant increase in the number of cyber attacksresulting from vulnerabilities within the supply chain. These attacks can result in devastating, expensive, and long-term ramifications for affected organizations, their supply chains, and their customers.”
Key Trends in Supply Chain Attacks:
- AI-Powered Attacks: Fraudsters will use AI tools to create fake communications, phishing, and deepfakes, making detection harder.
- Targeting Smaller Vendors: Cybercriminals will exploit weaker links in the supply chain to infiltrate larger organizations.
- Ransomware & Data Theft: Attackers may hold systems hostage or steal sensitive data to demand ransom.
- Disruption of Critical Infrastructure: Supply chain attacks may target sectors like energy or healthcare to cause widespread damage.
Key Takeaways
- Digital crime and presentation attacks are becoming easier to scale.
Deepfakes are only one part of the threat.
- A facial match does not prove that a genuine person is present.
Static checks can leave businesses exposed after onboarding.
Layered fraud prevention is stronger than a single detection tool.
Fortifying Operations Against Digital Crime with Robust KYC
KYC (Know Your Customer) processes can be pivotal in mitigating many of the emerging digital fraud threats businesses will face in 2025, such as deepfakes, social media fraud, AI-powered phishing, and supply chain attacks.
Combating Deepfakes: KYC can strengthen identity verification by ensuring that individuals undergoing onboarding are who they claim to be. By integrating liveness detection with KYC, businesses can prevent deepfake-based fraud during account creation or financial transactions, making it harder for fraudsters to impersonate legitimate customers. For more information on the rise of deepfakes, read “Deepfake Detection Software: Preventing Fraudulent Content.“
Preventing AI-Driven Phishing: KYC data helps ensure that communications (emails, messages, etc.) involving sensitive actions, such as wire transfers or account changes, are authenticated. By verifying the identity of the individual behind each request, businesses can better identify AI-generated phishing attempts, which rely on mimicking human communication patterns.
Securing the Supply Chain: KYC can be used to verify the legitimacy of third-party vendors and suppliers, ensuring they are not linked to fraudulent or criminal activities. By performing thorough due diligence on all suppliers, businesses can reduce the risk of supply chain attacks that exploit weaker links to infiltrate larger organizations.
In summary, for more information on how to strengthen your operations against presentation attacks with state-of-the-art KYC infrastructure, reach out to one of ComplyCube’s compliance experts today.
Frequently Asked Questions
what is digital crime?
Digital crime refers to illegal activity carried out through computers, mobile devices, online platforms, or digital communication systems. It includes identity fraud, phishing, account takeover, deepfake impersonation, synthetic identity fraud, ransomware, social media scams, and attacks against online verification processes.
How are deepfakes used to commit digital crime?
Fraudsters use deepfakes to imitate a person’s face or voice during video calls, biometric checks, account recovery, and social-engineering scams. A deepfake may be presented to a physical camera or injected directly into a verification system using virtual-camera software.
What is a presentation attack in identity verification?
A presentation attack occurs when a fraudster presents fake or manipulated biometric material to a capture device. Examples include printed photographs, masks, replayed videos, images displayed on another screen, and livestreams designed to appear like a genuine person completing a verification check.
Can liveness detection prevent deepfakes and presentation attacks?
Advanced liveness detection can help identify whether a real, physically present person is completing a biometric check. The strongest systems combine liveness analysis with presentation attack detection, deepfake detection, device intelligence, capture-channel analysis, and behavioural risk signals rather than relying on one control alone.
How does ComplyCube help businesses prevent digital crime?
ComplyCube helps businesses prevent digital crime through document verification, biometric liveness checks, presentation attack detection, deepfake detection, device intelligence and ongoing monitoring. By combining these controls in a risk-based verification process, ComplyCube enables organisations to identify manipulated identities, suspicious users and high-risk activity before fraudsters gain access to their services.
