Cognitive Heists series #3: The Call Is Coming from Inside Your Mind
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Show Notes
📞 The Call Is Coming from Inside Your Mind
Welcome to #3 of the "Cognitive Heists" series. The Voice in Your Head -- Authority, Audio Deepfakes, and the Power of a Familiar Voice
In 2019, a UK energy firm received a call. The voice on the other end sounded exactly like the CEO of their German parent company.
The request? Transfer €220,000 immediately to a trusted vendor. It wasn’t the CEO. It was a deepfake.
This was the first confirmed deepfake voice fraud used to commit corporate theft—and it’s only the beginning.
This issue dives into:
🎧 Why voice is one of the most powerful trust signals—and why that’s dangerous now
😨 How vishing, voice cloning, and audio deepfakes hijack your certainty
👻 A classic urban legend (yep—the babysitter and the call from inside the house)
🧠 The psychology of obedience, panic, and auditory illusion
🧯 And how to train your brain to pause the response before the wire transfer
In a world where your boss’s voice can be faked, what part of your brain do you not listen to?
A couple relevant sources related to AI based voice scams:
- [PROVED] Unsuspecting Call Recipients Are Super Vulnerable to AI Vishing: (this is my story about having an AI voice bot participate in DEFCON's Social Engineering Community Capture the Flag competition). https://blog.knowbe4.com/proved-unsuspecting-call-recipients-are-super-vulnerable-to-ai-vishing
- Seeing (and Hearing) Isn’t Believing: My SEC Presentation on AI-Driven Scams: https://blog.knowbe4.com/seeing-and-hearing-isnt-believing-my-sec-presentation-on-ai-driven-scams
The FAIK Files: AI Oopsies!
- Audio version: https://pod.link/1771521321/episode/af214a2812ad672b675870a9fb56f4cb
- YouTube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY31aE5-PxA
TechCrunch story: Google’s Gemini panicked when playing Pokémon: https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/17/googles-gemini-panicked-when-playing-pokemon/
P.S. -- Just a quick reminder that I've got a great book out that's all about deepfakes, disinformation, and deception. Be sure to check it out if you haven't already: https://ThisBookIsFAIK.com.
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