Wiz CEO says company was targeted with deepfake attack that used his voice | TechCrunch

Even cybersecurity companies aren’t safe from deepfake attacks.

Speaking on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, Wiz’s CEO and co-founder Assaf Rappaport, who recently turned down a $23 billion acquisition offer from Google, noted that his employees had been targeted by a deepfake attack just two weeks ago.

“Dozens of my employees got a voice message from me,” he explained. “The attack tried to get their credentials.”

The team caught on that something wasn’t right, however, because the hacker had tracked down audio of the CEO’s voice from a conference to create the deepfake.

Because he has public speaking anxiety, Rappaport’s voice from the event didn’t sound like the day-to-day voice that his employees were familiar with.

“That’s how they were able to say, ‘that doesn’t sound like Assaf.’”

The company could trace where the voice came from but wasn’t able to determine who was behind the attack.

“That’s why cyber attacks are so beneficial [for the attackers]… the risk of getting caught is very low,” Rappaport noted.

During the interview, the co-founder also spoke extensively about why Wiz turned down the Google deal, saying they believed the potential in the cloud security market was a $100 billion opportunity.

Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software.

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