A big-box retail version of synthetic ID has shaken some

A newer U.S. tech culture publication claims it has tested an AI site that generates convincing photos of fake IDs for $15, perhaps as many as 20,000 per day.

404 Media (the name of both the publication and its parent company) says a site known as OnlyFake is capable of making all kinds of digital identity fraud far easier and cheaper to carry out than most other avenues.

This is not a new threat for the industry, just the retail nature of it.

Editors with 404 Media say they were able to order a realistic looking photo of a California driver’s license (back and front), even including the carpeting beneath it. Even a careful look at the image seems to show that someone put “David Creeks” on the floor to be scanned by a phone.

Passports can be created and not of just U.S. documents. According to the publication, Swiss, Canadian and Austrian IDs have been seen online.

Indeed, the editors say they were able to defeat ID verification for OKX, a cryptocurrency exchange.

Biometric ID verification and authentication vendor Jumio allegedly supplies some security pieces to OKX, and when Jumio’s chief technology officer, Stuart Wells, was told by 404 Media about the fake, he blamed it on OKX’s infrastructure. OKX reacted sharply to the news, saying an investigation was ongoing.

OnlyFake reportedly uses neural networks and tools referred to as generators, according to 404 Media’s article describing the service. The owner of Only Fake allegedly said hundreds of IDs can be created at once using information from an Excel spreadsheet.

Customers load a government photo – in this case from a passport – and stand back as fake data is created and some signature options are displayed. The reporter had his fraudulent document in less than two minutes.

Article Topics

fraud prevention  |  identity document  |  identity verification  |  KYC  |  OnlyFake  |  synthetic identity fraud