Waterloo researchers uncover flaw in voice authentication systems

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

a man talks into a smart phone, which has a microphone icon superimposed over it

Computer scientists at the University of Waterloo have discovered a method of attack that can successfully bypass voice authentication security systems with up to a 99% success rate after only six tries.

Voice authentication – which allows companies to verify the identity of their clients via a supposedly unique “voiceprint” – has increasingly been used in remote banking, call centers and other security-critical scenarios.

The Waterloo researchers have developed a method that evades spoofing countermeasures and can fool most voice authentication systems within six attempts. They identified the markers in deepfake audio that betray it is computer-generated, and wrote a program that removes these markers, making it indistinguishable from authentic audio.

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