When a romance fraud expert, bestselling author, and professional scam-troll meets two cybersecurity pros obsessed with deepfakes and social engineering, you get one of the most eye‑opening – and strangely funny – episodes we’ve ever recorded.
In this episode of Simplifying Cyber, British author Becky Holmes (aka “Death to Spinach” and author of Keanu Reeves Is Not In Love With You) joins Aaron Pritz and Cody Rivers to unpack the murky world of online romance fraud, celebrity imposters, and how emerging AI and deepfake tech are supercharging social engineering.
We cover:
How Becky accidentally fell into the world of romance scams during lockdown by trolling “handsome soldiers” in her DMs
Why smart, successful, emotionally stable people still fall for romance fraud — and why the “it could never be me” mindset is so dangerous
The brutal impact of victim blaming and victim shaming in romance scams, and how media narratives make reporting even harder
What really happens behind celebrity scams (including fake Keanu Reeves, “meet and greet” offers, and wild opening lines from fraudsters)
How scammers use emotional hot states, urgency, fear, and love to bypass even strong rational defenses
Why shame is one of the most powerful tools in a scammer’s arsenal — in both personal and corporate cyber attacks
The parallels between romance fraud and corporate phishing, smishing, and business email compromise (BEC)
How security teams often “tech-splain” and bury the message in jargon normal people will never read
Why user awareness, empathy, and culture are just as critical as firewalls and MFA
Then it gets real.
Aaron and Cody put Becky in the middle of a live deepfake and AI demo using publicly available tools — starting with a fake kidnapping video, escalating into nightmare spinach scenarios (she really hates spinach), and ending in her “dream” deepfake wedding. Along the way, they show how shockingly easy it is to:
Deepfake a real person from a single photo
Clone a voice with just a few seconds of audio
Create emotionally manipulative video pleas that could fool friends, parents, or grandparents.
On Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Buzzsprout.
Or watch the whole recording here on our YouTube Channel!
Transcript of this episode:
Aaron Pritz (0:50.328)
Thanks for tuning in to Simply Solving Cyber. I'm Aaron Pritz. And today we're excited to be here with Becky Holmes, a British author who found ⁓ her start in romance scams during the pandemic and lockdown. And I'm not going to say anything more about that because I don't want to steal her thunder and the story. And we'll want to start that. But that led to ⁓ her first book, ⁓ Keanu Reeves is Not in Love with You.
Cody Rivers (0:56.926)
Cody Rivers.
Aaron Pritz (1:19.746)
And we'll talk about her upcoming book as well. And I even hear there might be a third one in the horizon. So, ⁓ great to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us this morning or afternoon. ⁓ Awesome. Well, let's get right into it. ⁓ Should I address you as death to spinach or Becky? ⁓ Let's use that to unpack your start into this topic.
Cody Rivers (1:24.985)
yeah.
Becky Holmes (1:30.261)
Thank you for inviting me.
Becky Holmes (1:42.171)
Let's go with Becky for the moment. Any mention of spinach is vetoed on this podcast. ⁓
Cody Rivers (1:47.493)
You ⁓
Aaron Pritz (1:47.658)
We'll just wait for it. There might be a surprise later in the show, but I'm not going to haunt your dreams yet. ⁓ Awesome. Well, tell our listeners how your story and this topic began and how ⁓ did it all begin for you?
Becky Holmes (1:54.291)
Please don't. Please, enough things haunt my dreams as it is. ⁓
Becky Holmes (2:7.260)
So this all started for me in the most random way. So I didn't go out to start looking at fraud. I didn't really have any particular interest in fraud. The only thing I knew about romance fraud was what I used to see on the TV and in the paper, which was usually, look at this woman. Look what's happened. Isn't she silly? ⁓ But during lockdown, I was obviously horribly bored ⁓ and joined Twitter.
which wasn't the cesspit that it is now, have to say. It was actually okay back then in 2020. And within a few days of joining, my inbox was flooded with these really young, handsome men who all looked quite similar. They were all in sort of army uniforms or pilot's uniforms or something. And they were all within about a day, desperately in love with me. I was kind of their ideal woman. Now you see, you laugh, that's rude.
Cody Rivers (3:2.474)
No.
Aaron Pritz (3:3.776)
We're inadvertently victim shaming and I think you've got that topic. ⁓
Stifle it Cody, Stifle it.
Cody Rivers (3:13.034)
⁓ Mine's just, I looked like the, ⁓ so quickly, said the pile of the uniform, they had the persona down right away.
Becky Holmes (3:22.278)
And it was, do you know, one thing I always say is, if one ⁓ young ⁓ handsome soldier had messaged me, ⁓ I could well have started talking back and this would be a very, very different show. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (3:36.654)
Amen.
Becky Holmes (3:37.638)
The fact that there were so many ⁓ was like an immediate red flag because I am exactly the sort of person that would become involved in a romance fraud because I talk to anybody and I have this kind of inbuilt need to help people. So I would be exactly the sort of person that would send money. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (3:54.498)
Now let's clarify, Becky, that was back then before all the the scammers pounce on you from this show. You are now a refined machine of anti-romance scam shrapnel, correct?
Becky Holmes (4:7.378)
Let's say yes. Do you know what though? I'm gonna say yes because I've got a partner. I still think if I was single, like nobody is immune to this. And also as soon as you start thinking, oh that could never get me. No, I don't know. Like your guard goes down a little bit and you know, they're very clever. So never say never. I need to stay with my partner forever. Just so.
Aaron Pritz (4:9.176)
Hahaha
Aaron Pritz (4:19.384)
That's fair.
Cody Rivers (4:35.294)
so you don't get scared. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (4:36.784)
If they're listening, no pressure, no pressure. ⁓
Becky Holmes (4:37.170)
⁓ So anyway, ⁓ had all of these messages and ⁓ to start with, I was just blocking them, deleting them. And then as boredom set in more and more, and I was staying with my mum at the time in my sort of childhood bedroom, and I just thought, right, that's it, I need a hobby. So I started messaging back ⁓ and it became obvious really quickly that they were pretty much sticking to a script.
So I thought, ⁓ I wonder what I can get away with and started saying the most ridiculous things just to see what they would do. And as it turns out, nothing, because they just keep asking you for money. ⁓ And it was really making me laugh. So I put these things up on Twitter ⁓ and lots and lots of people got involved and, you know, we were all kind of having a lot of fun with it, but
to sort of make it more serious and unintended consequence of this was that victims of romance fraud actually started getting in touch with me and telling me their stories. ⁓ And it became ⁓ fascinating to me. ⁓ Like, you know, these people that I was speaking to, they were intelligent, articulate, you know, good jobs, good social lives. And I thought, wow, this is a really misunderstood crime.
So I started looking into it and when I started looking into it, I then couldn't stop.
Aaron Pritz (6:3.562)
That's fair. And I like your point about it doesn't have to be. I we've all got I think everyone here has a story of one of our grandparents or parents that fell for something. And usually when I'm talking to a group and I do the show of hands of who here has had in their immediate family or friends circle ⁓ a victim of the scam. And it's usually like 80 to 90 percent, which is scary. But it's not just, you know, the aging, decaying grandmother or grandfather that
Becky Holmes (6:32.338)
Yeah.
Aaron Pritz (6:32.374)
is losing their mental faction or ⁓ unfortunately dealing with Alzheimer's or something. They're still a top target, but I think what you discovered and what we know within the industry is it could be anybody at any level of any ⁓ mental capacity.
Becky Holmes (6:47.922)
Absolutely and you know, ⁓ my experience echoes yours. So if I speak to say like a taxi driver or I don't know somebody in a waiting room and you kind of get chatting and I talk about what I do, they're like, God. So either I've had a taxi driver say to me, ⁓ don't even speak to me about that because I sent somebody a grand.
But other people have said, no, yeah, my uncle was involved in one of those. It is astonishing how many people know somebody that's been involved in romance fraud. And yet we still have this real kind of stereotype about the person. ⁓ It's ⁓ so interesting.
Cody Rivers (7:26.922)
Becky, I think you make a great point. There's it's kind of like there's like there's like a stigma that comes with it. And so there's like an embarrassment or a shaming. And we see it on like the corporate side with romance games is kind of that social engineering tactic. But if I fell for a fish or something here, there's a lot of times a fear of a punishment. So kind of kind of talk about how like that shame tool for attackers is a hurdle for kind of like cultures and how I kind of want to hear your your your spin on that. I think we see that a lot of it. So I want to hear your take on, you know, removing that stigma.
Becky Holmes (7:56.943)
Yeah, ⁓ I wish I could wave a magic wand and that be done right now because I think we'd be a lot further forward ⁓ than where we are. So in the UK, and I happen to know in the US, the victim shaming, ⁓ the victim blaming when it comes to romance fraud is off the scale. So you still hear, ⁓ well, ⁓ that was stupid. ⁓
she or he must be gullible, they must be naive, what's wrong with them, they're clearly mentally ill, as if that person would fancy you. You know, all this sort of stuff. And because the media go out with this image as well, people, know, and the headlines, ⁓ you know, middle aged woman falls for Keanu Reeves, you know, whatever it might be, people then don't want to report it.
they don't even want to tell their friends and family, let alone go to the police or their bank or whatever. ⁓ So we never ⁓ get a full picture of this crime even because of this victim shaming. ⁓ There's all sorts of things we can do in terms of language to sort of stop that, but ultimately, I don't know, I've been thinking about this for years and there seems, part of me thinks that we just want to feel superior to other people.
And therefore when you read something about somebody that's done something, the only way you can feel better about yourself is to write something awful on the internet. ⁓ And that is what frustrates me more than anything, because the people that I've interviewed and the people that ⁓ friends and colleagues of mine have spoken to, they aren't stupid.
You know, something was going on in their life at a particular time, which meant that they went down a road where they wish they wouldn't have done. And because of the victim blaming and the victim shaming, they'll rarely get over it. It frustrates me more than anything. And, you know, that is the same across any culture, any country, know, sexuality, age, whatever it might be, the shame is the same.
Cody Rivers (9:45.961)
Yep.
Aaron Pritz (10:5.826)
Yeah, I really interesting, sorry, Cody, ⁓ really interesting corporate story on the victim shaming. And it was actually, it's a positive story because it was an executive who had a mindset. And that this was when I was on the corporate side, this was the head of HR at a very large company. ⁓ And in one of the executive cybersecurity program meetings, we were looking at the email phishing statistics and the numbers were higher within.
Cody Rivers (10:5.852)
Yeah, ⁓ Aaron and I ⁓
Aaron Pritz (10:32.674)
you know, a specific function. was like, who are these people? Should we just get rid of them? ⁓ Like what, what, how are they so stupid? ⁓ so that was his opening stance. And then a month later or sometime after that, we did an executive with the CEO's permission and executive lead team Spearfish, which he fell for. And luckily the humility, like he processed that and he realized, and he got up on stage at his next HR town hall and told his story of like,
this was my position. ⁓ I was wondering who these stupid people were. And then I realized they weren't stupid people and I was one of them. And when he did that on stage to his town hall and used humility, not shame, the numbers in the next test of the employees went down drastically, more than any other area. So I think to your point on if we can reverse, if we had a magic wand, if you could switch shame into empathy.
and give people the support and the safe space to raise their hand and say, I think I did something not good. I need help. That would be a better place than where we're at across both families and corporate today.
Becky Holmes (11:38.610)
You know, I love to hear more stories like that of actually somebody getting up on stage in front of his employees and saying, okay, I made a mistake here. And if it can happen to me, then just let's all watch out. I would love to hear more of that.
Aaron Pritz (11:55.693)
We need a- ⁓
Cody Rivers (11:56.810)
⁓ Yeah, Becky, what I was trying to talk about earlier is, so a lot of times when we build these human risk management programs for large companies and awareness, ⁓ the challenge we have is the focus isn't IT and cyber. It's going to be your non-technical function parts of the company because they live and breathe it. They know it. It's how do I engage marketing, finance, operations, HR? And so I kind of want to think like as a non-technical person, what do you think the cyber industry gets wrong?
about how we talk to normal people or non-cyber IT people.
Becky Holmes (12:32.082)
Point one, I would say is, God, it can be boring. you know, if I'll count myself as a normal person. So I read a lot of academic stuff and stuff that comes out from tech people. And, you know, that's part of my job is to read things and turn it into kind of everyday language. And sometimes I have to have a break before I've got to about the third paragraph, because I think, what is this? Nobody understands this.
you know, the amount of acronyms, initialisms, just all these things that regular people do not understand. And if they don't understand it, they're going to switch off. ⁓ It's boring. Let's make things more interesting for normal people. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (13:19.192)
Are we tech-splaining and burying the lead, Are we tech-splaining to people and burying the lead? You see what I did there? I took mansplaining and made it tech-splaining. And burying the lead, I learned from our marketing person where you take the main point and you put it way down in the details of the article and then it's like, don't even know what we're talking about.
Becky Holmes (13:22.275)
Sorry, say again.
Cody Rivers (13:29.002)
you
Becky Holmes (13:40.283)
marketing speak. Just gone from text speak to marketing speak. ⁓ And this is the thing, we all do it. So yeah, we all talk in our own particular language. ⁓ And then we expect other people to understand it. You know, ⁓ I do it all the time. And I'm talking to friends about publishing and stuff. And they say, well, I don't even know what that means. ⁓ But I think something, I was looking at something earlier today.
Cody Rivers (13:42.302)
Yeah. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (13:43.237)
I'm asking to speak to you. I'm telling you. I blame wrongly. Yeah.
Becky Holmes (14:10.034)
⁓ by a British company, I won't say who, and they'd said well what do you think to this? And I said who have you tested this on? And they said you know people within the company and we've got in ⁓ you know like a focus group and stuff and I said okay ⁓ who's in the focus group? ⁓ you know sort of people in the same industry and I said just get some normal people in, you know you're there's no point testing stuff.
on the people who already know how to use it. ⁓ And I think that is something that really frustrates me in this world. know, we all go to conferences and pat each other on the back about our latest bit of tech and our latest bit of marketing and stuff. But there's no point doing that if nobody outside the industry knows or cares.
Aaron Pritz (14:56.814)
great point.
Cody Rivers (14:57.620)
I also, I think that's a hundred percent right. think also what we see sometimes is awareness and training is down the list of priority. There's a big focus on my technical controls and tools to put in place. And I think what we try to bring back is that like these controls fail when a user is emotionally compromised, you know, if it's an MFA and to your point. now we've got the tool is circumvented. They can be compromised because you've emotionally compromised a person.
they're too scared or shame to say they've been compromised and talk about it. So now you've got a kind of a vulnerability. So I think that is a challenge. kind of like love to hear your point of like, if you're kind of like CISO or cyber and you're in charge of the program, what are you saying or doing to say, Hey, this is how do you push that importance up the ladder? When it's, then they say, well, we've got tools for that.
Becky Holmes (15:46.183)
think, I mean, unfortunately, when you're talking to people at the top, a lot of it's going to be based around the bottom line, isn't it? ⁓ You know, and sort of saying, look, you're going to lose money if you stop if you keep doing what you're doing. ⁓ But your point about, ⁓ you know, when people are in that state, we call it the hot state. And you're right, that's when people are at their weakest. That's what social engineering is all about, you know, getting people in that in that moment when they're not going to follow the rules, and they're not going to kind of do what
what they're supposed to do and they're not going to follow systems and all that kind of thing. ⁓ And I think people at the top to answer your question, it's ⁓ going to sound a bit hippie, but I think they need to be put in front of people who use their products ⁓ and who are on the receiving end, ⁓ you know, the very kind of lowest people on the wrong, you like, people like me. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (16:32.974)
Hmm.
Becky Holmes (16:42.022)
who will say, look, I don't understand and therefore I've taken my business elsewhere. Or I don't understand and therefore I've stopped paying for your subscription, whatever it might be. ⁓ Because fraudsters are getting cleverer and ⁓ they work on this social engineering, they work on putting us into these kind of visceral states of panic. ⁓ And that's never going to stop. So,
people need to be looking at the human side of things ⁓ more than the tech. You know, you can have all the tech in the world, but if it's not reaching people in the right way, if it's not going to help people overcome what is a very visceral reaction, then it is pointless.
Cody Rivers (17:27.826)
Yeah, ⁓ I know we've got.
Aaron Pritz (17:29.176)
So ⁓ one more question, and I think we're going to have some fun in ⁓ becoming Becky Holmes from a deepfake standpoint. ⁓ in your journey with Death to Spinach and the Twitter fame and kind of progressing into writing, ⁓ when did you transition from your own entertainment and entertaining the audience to ⁓ understanding, I've seen so many replies back and this is real and I want to become
Becky Holmes (17:37.104)
You poor thing. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (17:58.775)
an educator, not just a humorist. And then how did you balance that, you know, shift between humor and serious in both your writing as well as your talks?
Becky Holmes (18:9.522)
⁓
⁓ It started when ⁓ people started getting in ⁓ touch with me that had been genuine victims. That's when I started to think, okay, this isn't just about me having a laugh at my, you know, one end of my phone. ⁓ But ⁓ I've always been a really big believer in finding humor in everything. ⁓ Well, as many things as you can. ⁓ And in terms of finding the balance for me, ⁓ it was all around ⁓
making fun of the scammer, ⁓ never of the victim. ⁓ And I think that's a very important line to tread because romance fraud, fraud of any sort, is not funny. But you can find humour in some of the things that these fraudsters say.
And when I've spoken to victims of fraud, even they themselves have found humor in some of the situations. ⁓ Looking back on it, of course, ⁓ in the moment, it's not funny. ⁓ So ⁓ it has been a journey and in actual fact, to answer your question around when I wanted to be an educator, that didn't really factor in my thoughts for a long time. When I started writing the first book, the Keanu book, ⁓
⁓ I was writing it as a project ⁓ because I was interested and it wasn't until I started going ⁓ on and on and on that I thought, wow, actually, there's a lot of people don't know a lot of things. And it just, ⁓ I guess, sort of morphed from there. People were inviting me to speak and, you know, sort of saying, I didn't know that that's really interesting. And of course, that gives you the impetus to then go off and research more.
Aaron Pritz (19:57.325)
Yeah.
Becky Holmes (19:58.011)
So I don't think I could ever describe myself as an educator. That's probably too grand a title. ⁓ Maybe someone who just helps people understand some of the nuances, but it's a very gradual process. And every day ⁓ I'm still educating myself, because let's face it, you know, I can't educate myself quicker than they're changing their tactics. It's, you know, it's frightening. ⁓ So it's been gradual and great.
Cody Rivers (20:26.250)
I do want to hear, you said you got some great things. What's like the most, if you can share, what's the most ridiculous opening line that you received that comes to mind?
Becky Holmes (20:38.258)
That's easy. That was a Keanu Reeves fraudster. Now, with celebrity scams, they often don't start out so blatant because of course you'd be thinking this is Keanu Reeves, why does he need something from me? But this one decided that he couldn't possibly waste any time. Hi, it's Keanu Reeves. I'm editing a new film at the moment. I need a $200 iTunes voucher. That was it, straight off.
Aaron Pritz (21:4.322)
Was that a video? Was that an audio file? What did that come through?
Cody Rivers (21:4.670)
Wow.
Becky Holmes (21:8.006)
That was just a message ⁓ into my DMs on Twitter. Yeah, yeah. So I clicked on the profile, which I always do, and he had three followers ⁓ and his account had been made that month. And I think it was only about the fourth of the month as it was. ⁓ I was confused by that one because I thought, ⁓ I don't know how successful you're going to be. I don't know if he was having an off day or whether he was a learner. ⁓
But it was a rough start for him.
Cody Rivers (21:40.938)
Yeah, man, I think about my days when I was younger and it was the Nigerian prince who was trying to give me his entire fortune. that was what I resonate with in my early years of like... The other day on Instagram though, the algorithm got me because I saw there was like a heist and they saw like some apartment in Nigeria or something was found with like millions of dollars in it. And the comment was so great because I love comments on the social webs. And it was like...
Aaron Pritz (21:50.837)
Are you still waiting for that, Cody?
Cody Rivers (22:8.168)
This man tried to, I this money for all these years and no one ever said yes. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (22:12.398)
⁓ Well played. Well played. Well, ⁓ speaking of playing, it's time to play a game, ⁓ And I know that you've played along with us. You've not opened a few video files that we sent to you. ⁓ I know, like creating so much FOMO before the show. So a little bit of setup and then we'll go right into it. And we're going to gauge your reaction real time. ⁓ You had asked a couple of things when we first met. One, ⁓
Cody Rivers (22:15.850)
⁓ It was so good.
Becky Holmes (22:27.314)
and I'm desperate too! ⁓
Aaron Pritz (22:42.104)
how is the technology evolving ⁓ with AI and some of the video AI and really quite honestly, some of the AI products that are challenging Hollywood or at least going to be relevant in Hollywood and other film studios and how they get some of the things done that took them years or months before. So we played with those technologies. We did a little bit of research on you based upon what's publicly available on the internet, ⁓ because you're an author, you have lots of back of the book, here's all about Becky. ⁓
Becky Holmes (23:11.120)
At least it was only what's publicly available. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (23:13.218)
That's true. That's true. You know, in a couple more conversations, if Cody and I came to the UK and took you out to dinner, we'd get the rest of the story. But we went with what we had available and we created three scenarios. Some of them might be fear based scenarios and some of them may be your most ⁓ desired dream come true. So with that, Bronwyn from our show has put together ⁓ three videos. ⁓ They're labeled one, two and three. So why don't you open video one first?
Cody Rivers (23:13.386)
You
Cody Rivers (23:44.106)
That's great.
Aaron Pritz (23:47.950)
and turn up your sound if it's not already up.
Becky Holmes (23:53.532)
That was a problem play. ⁓
Hang on.
Becky Holmes (24:2.716)
There was a problem. ⁓ Right. Let me download it. See if that helps. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (24:5.944)
Cool, yeah, and we can edit this piece, no worries.
Aaron Pritz (24:18.284)
Now, we actually have your voice. We didn't put the time in. We'll maybe fix this for what we replay it. We can use your actual voice from public recordings and overdub it, but this was five seconds of AI prompting in a higher-end paid tool ⁓ using a single photo of you, the one that you had posted on LinkedIn. ⁓ Five seconds, yeah, five seconds of effort. It took maybe a minute and half to process, but then...
Becky Holmes (24:41.062)
Five seconds.
Aaron Pritz (24:47.030)
it's ready to roll. Okay, video two. Actually, can you describe for the audio listeners what just happened?
Becky Holmes (24:55.410)
⁓ I feel slightly shocked. ⁓ So I opened the video and it was me ⁓ tied to a post. ⁓ Now, and you didn't get that from my private collection, so that is... ⁓ That was up there. So that's me tied to a post, ⁓ asking, ⁓ sending a video to my mum asking for help. And I'm sitting, there's a still of it now on my screen. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (24:58.723)
Ha
Cody Rivers (25:8.938)
⁓ We did. ⁓ That was not there. ⁓
Becky Holmes (25:25.682)
⁓ It's really weird. ⁓ That's really weird to say.
Aaron Pritz (25:30.178)
Yeah, yeah, and they can get even more sophisticated using multiple photos. This was just done with one photo and the technology that unfortunately is very mainstream. So there's a lot of good things and cool things you can do. If you're a Star Wars fan, remember Mark Hamill or Luke Skywalker ⁓ and the younger version of himself that no longer exists. That's using a variation of this technology. So there's cool things that you can do from an entertainment standpoint.
But obviously, thinking of this as a criminal, how could we very quickly with a single image of someone, and if you want to spend a little effort, their actual voice, if you can get a recording of three seconds of them online, that's enough to be 85 % accurate in the voice, accent, intonation, all of that stuff.
Becky Holmes (26:18.374)
That's just...
Aaron Pritz (26:22.090)
unfortunate, exciting, shocking, sad, all of them, all of the emotions. ⁓
Becky Holmes (26:27.834)
Yeah, all of the emotions and it's just weird when you look at videos of yourself or photos of yourself you've seen them before haven't you? You recognise the situation but that's... that's so weird! It's even got my hair in line!
Aaron Pritz (26:38.232)
Yeah, fabricated reality is I think the new term that they're using for that. Fabricated reality or ⁓ synthetic reality are the two phrases, yeah.
Becky Holmes (26:45.851)
It's for Saree. ⁓
Becky Holmes (26:50.564)
yeah i tell you what though i've noticed ⁓ no one's gonna believe that's me because i always have my nails done ⁓
Aaron Pritz (26:58.574)
⁓ Well, now that I know that, if I just change the prompt to say freshly done nails. ⁓ Exactly. All right, video two. Let's see what the next scenario unfolds. It'll get funnier and better from here, I think.
Becky Holmes (27:2.298)
So.
Yeah, yeah, that will be it then. That's the only chain. Wow.
Cody Rivers (27:7.850)
Bam, got him.
Becky Holmes (27:14.898)
Okay, video two. Right, I need to download that. Okay.
Aaron Pritz (27:35.804)
What has happened, Becky, for our listeners?
Becky Holmes (27:39.227)
Okay, so for the listeners, my ⁓ Twitter handle is at death to spinach ⁓ because I'm horrified by the stuff. So I've just opened a video of me sitting amongst fresh spinach, canned spinach, why anybody would want that? I don't know. And frozen. ⁓ And the still that I've got it stopped on at the moment is exactly what my face would be like if I was sitting there.
Aaron Pritz (28:2.658)
your reaction. Wow. AI engaged that. I think I prompted that you had a hatred of spinach and would be shocked to be in the room. So I think it nailed it. Again, ⁓ less than a minute to think of the idea and ⁓ a couple of minutes for the AI to create the output.
Becky Holmes (28:12.508)
So how long would that take to do?
Becky Holmes (28:23.598)
I need to have a word with AI because I've got some frown lines between my eyebrows and they have picked that up. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (28:28.526)
⁓ We can, we can. Any improvements we can make. ⁓
Becky Holmes (28:34.276)
No, it's far too realistic. I was hoping that at least they would have, you know, blurred that out or... Yeah.
Aaron Pritz (28:40.302)
⁓ Yep. All right. On to video three. And this one's going to be the happiest moment of your life. But I didn't know when I did this one that you now have a partner. So hopefully he's OK with this fantasy.
Becky Holmes (28:53.296)
Right, I'm intrigued.
Becky Holmes (29:0.123)
it's called Becky Marries. ⁓ Right, let's see.
Becky Holmes (29:6.691)
⁓ my god! ⁓
Cody Rivers (29:8.138)
You
Aaron Pritz (29:14.574)
Who is that, Becky?
Becky Holmes (29:16.770)
Greg Davis, the love of my life. Do you know, ⁓ for a minute then, because I am, ⁓ for anyone listening, there's a British comedian called Greg Davis, ⁓ who I find hysterical, ⁓ and I'm completely obsessed with him. I think he's the most perfect human in the world. No one can understand that, but I really do. And this is me getting married to him on a beach. And just for a minute when I watched that,
Aaron Pritz (29:19.150)
⁓ Yeah, that was
Becky Holmes (29:45.932)
All my worries disappeared. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (29:48.367)
⁓ See, we like to start with shock and then end with a happy ending. ⁓ Bronwyn timed those videos and phased them exactly right to start you with the not good emotions and then resolve in the ultimate dreams come true.
Becky Holmes (30:4.370)
I'm a little bit worried I'm gonna have to delete that last one because I might, it will be the sort of thing where I just play it over and over again and then start believing that we are married and then, you know, go into a whole sort of, a whole different reality.
Cody Rivers (30:18.580)
So the ⁓ uniform men didn't get you, but this Greg Davis on the beach mirror. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (30:24.247)
If he was Greg. ⁓
Becky Holmes (30:24.474)
Yeah, absolutely. Do you know, ⁓ so celebrity fraudsters, one of their tactics is that they offer you a meet and greet package and you have to pay their management this fee to meet them. And I've often thought to myself, I don't know why anybody hasn't tried ⁓ the Greg Davis one on me. Why has nobody set up a Greg Davis account and tried to say, you know, 1500 quid and I'll come and take you for dinner. I'd be all over it.
Aaron Pritz (30:52.366)
⁓ That's true. Hopefully.
Becky Holmes (30:53.286)
That's not an invitation. Anyone that's that's not an invitation to do it, because I will turn up at your house in my best dress. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (30:56.576)
Exactly. Exactly. ⁓ All right. Well, ⁓ the last and final example really comes back to your question when we had our first conversation on is real time deep fake possible or are we only dealing with videos that are done kind of in the moment? So the challenge and I only used ⁓ publicly available tools that some criminals did. I use minimal effort and I used a single photo. So if we did
Cody Rivers (30:56.606)
Hahaha
you
Aaron Pritz (31:26.540)
more time on this for a more sophisticated live deep fake. We would ⁓ find a video of you for three plus minutes. We'd train a model. We'd spend a little bit more time and effort. We'd get the audio. We would do all that. So it is most compelling possible. But what we're going to show today includes the single photo of you posted on LinkedIn using a Mac application that's very, available to anyone. And then lastly, a $20.
wig from Amazon because my hair, my forehead is very not Becky. And if we got one of the ladies from the office, ⁓ they'd have an easier ⁓ chance of becoming you. But this is a tall order to say, take this six foot five inch. I don't know how many centimeters that is. I know you're in the ⁓ metric imperial system difference, but I got the, I mean, you could broadcast a ⁓ cinema movie on this forehead. So what I'm working with, I either need a hat.
I need a wig or I need somebody that looks like me to pull it off because the live deep fake is going to focus in this area here. So I know you changed your hairstyle slightly since we first met, but this is Amazon Becky's hair. And I'm actually going to ping my EA to come in here and help us get this on. Ready? ⁓
Becky Holmes (32:37.426)
What?
Becky Holmes (32:43.833)
costume change, it's like being at a Mariah Carey gig. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (32:46.638)
⁓ Exactly. I'm not, I don't have the tech team and the wardrobe to do the quite the quick change of maybe a Taylor Swift. We're going to get this on. You might see Christie coming in here. We've got a brush. So we're going to first get this mounted up ⁓ and then we're going to see what we can do. Here comes Christie. Welcome to the show, Christie Hoover. ⁓ right. So ⁓ we're going to get this on. Fix me up. Make me beautiful. ⁓
Cody Rivers (33:7.956)
Bye.
Becky Holmes (33:8.946)
⁓ I wouldn't bother with the brush. I'm always a mess.
Cody Rivers (33:15.068)
Now we're talking
Becky Holmes (33:15.794)
⁓ I didn't realise it was going to be this kind of show! ⁓
Aaron Pritz (33:16.492)
⁓ my goodness.
Cody Rivers (33:20.716)
Hehehehehe ⁓
Aaron Pritz (33:23.054)
⁓ All right, we got it pulled back. How do you feel? I feel beautiful. Thank you, Kristy. ⁓ All right. ⁓ So now we have Becky. We're going to reduce my forehead a little bit more because that's going to be the impediment. And I'm going to get it back out of my face so you can fully see the face. All right. Now we've got to find I'm going to go off camera here and find.
Cody Rivers (33:28.228)
yeah. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (33:50.296)
Cody, feel free to talk amongst yourself as I'm getting this finally ready here.
Cody Rivers (33:55.250)
Yes, yeah. So a lot of these tools too, I think the key thing that was here is that this is not some like elaborate multi thousand or, you know, doesn't, you know, ⁓ cost to pull off. so some of the challenges when people in large companies say, well, it's not really possible. We can do this with iPhones, with cameras, with MacBooks. And as you'll see here pretty easily today. So the ability for this to be done is real low. ⁓ And the scale and the speed at which they can do it is pretty quick as well, too. So.
think Aaron's back and ready to roll, that's a key thing we try and tell people and ⁓ from our clients is that this is not some far-fetched thing that may happen someday. It's very easy to pull off. It's very common. And there should be ways that you should start putting in information and education to help folks ⁓ learn against it.
Aaron Pritz (34:43.214)
⁓ Real quick, Bronwyn, did we discover prior, I can't switch cameras live, but do I need to come out and come back in?
Becky Holmes (34:53.104)
What the fuck? ⁓
Aaron Pritz (34:55.341)
I think in teams you can switch it and I didn't do the dry run. We'll edit this out. But I think in the Alan Alford ⁓ recording, we had to come in and come back out. So I'm going to try that now.
Bronwen Hudson (34:56.575)
⁓ Thank
Bronwen Hudson (35:5.929)
Cool, do it.
Becky Holmes (35:6.354)
This is the worst RuPaul's Drag Race I've ever seen. ⁓
Bronwen Hudson (35:14.781)
And not saying something because there's some rough wigs on that. ⁓
Cody Rivers (35:17.002)
⁓ Hahaha
Becky Holmes (35:17.970)
you
Bronwen Hudson (35:20.959)
you ⁓
Becky Holmes (35:21.938)
⁓ my god. That ⁓ that's so weird. That hostage one is so weird.
Cody Rivers (35:23.060)
It's so good.
Bronwen Hudson (35:30.279)
awful, ⁓
Cody Rivers (35:32.554)
It's there's so many ones that like you can elicit. Like it's again to your point, it's emotional, right? I need to fear urgency authority. There's a couple of different different triggers that you want to hit, but like that goes to someone. We did some stuff for a client and it was, you know, a grandson or granddaughter calling their grandparents. Hey, don't tell anybody I'm embarrassed of getting in trouble. I'm in the jail. Can you please send this this this wire to get my bail paid for?
Becky Holmes (35:42.076)
Yeah.
Bronwen Hudson (35:59.178)
Yeah. ⁓
Becky Holmes (36:1.104)
Huh!
Aaron Pritz (36:1.254)
Hello, family. ⁓
Cody Rivers (36:6.013)
Becky. Well, hello. Welcome to Reveal Risk.
Becky Holmes (36:7.711)
my-
⁓ other Becky, what have you done to your hair? ⁓
Aaron Pritz (36:13.456)
Other Bucky, yes. I don't have the voice changer on, so I'm going to practice ⁓ off the mic there. That was bad. A bad British accent and a bad female accent, but yes. So, you know, this is one photo and a simple AI deep fake model, which is basically taking the stitch of your face and embedding it on to my face. And you can see, you know, some of the things like you'll see glitches if I
Cody Rivers (36:18.341)
Hahaha
Becky Holmes (36:18.610)
you
Becky Holmes (36:26.342)
Come on.
Cody Rivers (36:38.077)
much. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (36:42.856)
if I put my hand in front of the face. Or as I'm turning to the side, you can see the face start to come unstitched there. So those are some of the things that while it's getting better and better, and I've seen some of the more sophisticated models, if we're really trying to target you or someone that knows you, that you can turn a good almost 90 degrees before you get to the point where it's going to distort.
Becky Holmes (36:44.973)
yeah, yeah.
Becky Holmes (37:8.528)
This is freaking me out. ⁓
Cody Rivers (37:10.676)
Can you imagine Mrs. Doubtfire and today's technology, what it would do?
Aaron Pritz (37:15.890)
probably cut production time by 1 1 hundredth or ⁓ thousand percent.
Becky Holmes (37:16.283)
Yeah
Cody Rivers (37:21.160)
Robin Williams with a deep fake would be untouchable. ⁓
Becky Holmes (37:28.305)
just
⁓ I honestly can't, I don't know how I feel. I don't know how I feel about this. I'm obviously sort of, stop smiling at me because it looks like me. ⁓
Cody Rivers (37:38.570)
⁓ Hahaha ⁓
Aaron Pritz (37:41.190)
you ⁓
Cody Rivers (37:43.915)
⁓ And so ⁓ back into my earlier point, a lot of the things when you look at like training and things, you how do I combat against this? Because technical controls don't exist. It's part of it just like you can even do it. It's just that, you know, it won't be perfect. It could be grainy. But how many times are you on Teams calls right now or Google calls? And it's like the voice chops out or the video is kind of choppy. So you could easily make excuse or common reason for why it's not it's not perfect. But you've got a very believable example.
Aaron Pritz (38:13.244)
Please buy my book.
Cody Rivers (38:16.219)
Send gift cards. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (38:19.152)
Send your gift cards. $25. I just need them.
Becky Holmes (38:30.182)
I can't stop looking at it. It's like I knew that you, I knew you were gonna do this, ⁓ but I didn't expect to sort of feel like ⁓ I do now, which is just, ⁓ it's given me the ick.
Aaron Pritz (38:44.625)
You
Cody Rivers (38:45.482)
Oh, man. Well, and not in this case here, but oftentimes you've got deep fakes that will fake someone for authority or to do, you know, insert financial scam. Another one that was in the news this is years ago was last year was a principal. I think it was in Maryland. Got deep faked saying some pretty bad, like political and racial things on YouTube. And as Mark Twain always says,
a lie can circle the globe twice before the truth can lace up its shoes. And so it was out, all the things were said, the deepfake until it was, and then later on was proven to be a deepfake and wasn't really him. But at that point now the damage is done. And so you've got the issue of reputational damage. There was no financial scheme that was executed, similar ways. So.
Bronwen Hudson (40:20.831)
⁓ I think it'll look something. ⁓
Becky Holmes (40:24.306)
that is the typical straight man pretending to be a woman you all do this ⁓
Cody Rivers (40:28.740)
Hahaha
Cody Rivers (40:35.283)
Yeah. ⁓
Becky Holmes (40:35.856)
didn't like that.
Aaron Pritz (40:36.926)
Alright, I'm back in, ⁓ I wouldn't say better form, but not the big, Aaron face trying to be Becky form.
Becky Holmes (40:45.938)
That was so weird. So out of interest then, what can you do about hair? So obviously fraudsters aren't going to always be using a wig, are they? What can you do?
Aaron Pritz (41:4.652)
⁓ A ball cap for ⁓ less easy with women with longer hair. But ⁓ if I had it pulled back, then I could maybe just get closer into my mic or in my camera and just kind of crop out the top. ⁓ So there's a lot of ways. There's another example that we're doing ⁓ in a health care ⁓ after speaking engagement this afternoon where that gentleman has kind of completely bald on top, hair on sides, and I'm just getting close to the camera.
Becky Holmes (41:18.960)
Okay.
Aaron Pritz (41:34.294)
getting the forehead up enough and then it basically fills out the rest of his head pretty close to what it looks like. But you just, you didn't need to play with your camera or use a prop or, you know, there's a lot of the early deep fakes, you know, we're just really cheap wigs. Cody did one of me live on stage and we had the, the men's wigs are really tough for 20 bucks, but we got a 20 buck one and it was like this Scooby-Doo shaggy, like ⁓ brown throw.
Cody Rivers (42:0.618)
You
Aaron Pritz (42:3.232)
But it was enough that on stage, it's like, you it looked good enough to probably fool my grandmother or my mom, definitely my mom. ⁓ So it's, just, don't need to have perfect. You need to have close enough. ⁓
Cody Rivers (42:16.359)
Yes. ⁓
Becky Holmes (42:16.932)
So presumably the tech is coming whereby you won't need a wig at all.
Aaron Pritz (42:21.334)
Correct. ⁓ Currently in post-production, you can do a full character swap ⁓ and film a video of someone and completely replace them with the AI representation of the person that you're trying to target or replicate if it's a Hollywood type thing. So that's possible now. We actually did another demonstration of that with one of our directors on our team and swapping it for guy that I'm co-presenting with this afternoon.
Cody Rivers (42:39.252)
Yeah.
Aaron Pritz (42:49.164)
But that right now, the speed of the technology, that still takes a couple of minutes to process. But that will catch up. Similar to the deep fake thing that we just did five years ago, you'd be dealing with a couple, three seconds of latency and lag, and it wouldn't be as close to real time as it is. The speed of processing the advancement of the technology and the AI is only getting better. So I expect, and this is the really hard part with like why there's no ubiquitous
detection solutions out there that would live in your Teams environments, in your Zoom. There's some offerings. We're tracking them. We're investing in them where we ⁓ think they have promise. But the sad reality is the technology of the threat actors is probably outpacing the detection capabilities. We will bet on tools, but we will not ⁓ relent on giving education and business process changes to put checks and balances in place to prevent the bad things from happening.
Becky Holmes (43:33.562)
Yeah.
Cody Rivers (43:47.114)
there. ⁓
Aaron Pritz (43:47.178)
because I think we can't ⁓ fully bet on technology to keep pace here and just make this problem go away. I don't see it happening in the near future.
Becky Holmes (43:55.089)
And what about putting voice over? So using my voice as part of the real time, is that that's doable, presumably?
Aaron Pritz (44:1.684)
That's doable now. actually ⁓ the voice deepfake is even simpler than the video deepfake. ⁓ What we would typically do, and Cody and I have demonstrated this live actually at a ISACA chapter meeting here in town, but ⁓ you have a second, you know, have a microphone, you run that through another laptop and have it all pre-programmed to be your voice or whoever you're trying to target. And then it would come out. There's a little bit of lag on that, but it would come out.
⁓ of the speaker, similar to the video. you ⁓ know, getting this all woven together, you can do a video and voice all at once. There's going to be lip sync issues of timing. That'll get better over time. But how different is that than a Zoom meeting where you have a bad connection and it's, you know, your voice is not matching the video. So you can just say, hey, my connection is not great. ⁓ I've been glitching all day. And then no one's going to think twice about it.
Becky Holmes (44:49.906)
Absolutely, yeah.
Becky Holmes (44:59.482)
And also in the case of these, ⁓ you know, these sort of ⁓ fear mongering ones to parents, if you're saying that you're abroad, for example, like you're on holiday and someone snatched your phone, then there could well be a delay or, you know, a lag.
Aaron Pritz (45:15.852)
⁓ Well, hopefully, Becky, this has been fun, probably a little scary. I know we prepped you of what we're doing, but to your point, we didn't show you most of the stuff until this very episode. What parting thoughts do you have, both for the lay audience and the cybersecurity community audience, ⁓ on ⁓ what you want to leave them with or what we want to focus on getting better as a world ⁓ together?
Becky Holmes (45:43.207)
That's quite a question. ⁓ I'm still full of ⁓ deep fake images of myself at the moment. I have to take some time ⁓ to process that away from my screen. ⁓ I think for me, it's still about considering the human beings at the end. ⁓ Like I said before,
Cody Rivers (45:49.898)
I'm out. ⁓
Becky Holmes (46:4.548)
We are so clever, human beings are so clever and especially you guys over in cyber and tech and stuff, your brains are enormous but ⁓ not everybody's is. So you know people like me who don't understand that world, you need to be talking to people like me and testing things on people like me and people like my mum ⁓ because ⁓
I'll repeat it again, there is no point having all the tech in the world if people don't know about it, how to use it, they're frightened of it, they don't understand it. Think about who it is that you're trying to help at the end.
Aaron Pritz (46:47.466)
the human experience. We all need to get better at that in life and in our corporate worlds and I think definitely in cyber. Becky, thanks for joining the show. Really appreciate the discussion and look forward to future collaborations.
Cody Rivers (46:58.654)
Yeah, ⁓ this is awesome.
Becky Holmes (47:0.658)
It's ⁓ been quite the journey this last hour. Thank you. ⁓
Cody Rivers (47:5.118)
Becky, thank you so much for being a good teammate. We appreciate it. This is awesome.