--- title: "🛡️ Ghost Applicants Use Deepfakes to Trick Interviews and Gain System Access | AI Cybersecurity Daily" description: "I'm Muyan. Today we'll talk about the tricky \"ghost applicants\" using Deepfake technology to bypass interviews and infiltrate enterprises to obtain high-privilege accounts. Additionally, ransomware affiliates are starting to use AI automation frameworks to exploit edge device vulnerabilities, while Linux kernel maintainers recently warned about AI review tools: what security risks lie behind this? I'll tell you in a moment." canonical_url: "https://blog.markkulab.net/en/ai-security/ai-security-2026-10-26" author: "Mark Ku" author_url: "https://blog.markkulab.net/en/author/mark-ku" site: "Mark Ku's Tech Notes" date_published: "2026-10-26T02:00:00.000Z" category: "AI Cybersecurity Daily" tags: ["ai-security", "podcast", "AI 資安", "AI資安", "Deepfake", "勒索軟體", "身分驗證", "Linux核心", "安全修補"] language: "en" license: "CC BY 4.0" license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" attribution: "when reusing or quoting, credit the author and link back to the original" --- # 🛡️ Ghost Applicants Use Deepfakes to Trick Interviews and Gain System Access | AI Cybersecurity Daily ## Opening Remarks I'm Mu-Yen. Today, we're talking about the tricky "ghost applicants" who use Deepfake technology to trick interviewers and infiltrate companies to obtain high-privilege accounts. In addition, ransomware affiliates are starting to use AI automation frameworks to exploit vulnerabilities in edge devices. Meanwhile, Linux kernel maintainers have recently issued warnings about AI review tools. What security risks are hidden behind this? I'll tell you in a moment. ## Today's AI Security Focus ### 1. Ransomware Groups Use AI-Automated Red Team Kill Chain Frameworks to Launch Attacks - **What Happened**: According to cybersecurity firm SOCRadar, affiliates of the ransomware groups INC Ransom and The Gentlemen are using an AI-driven automated red team kill chain framework called "Phantom" (a kill chain refers to the complete steps an attacker takes from reconnaissance to completing an attack). This framework adopts an "AI-executed, human-approved" model, where human operators provide prompts and the AI is responsible for planning reconnaissance, selecting techniques, generating commands, and drafting ransom notes. This allows them to compromise edge and remote access systems like FortiClient EMS (such as CVE-2023-48788) and cPanel (such as CVE-2023-29489) at scale, affecting multiple organizations worldwide. - **Impact**: Any enterprise using unpatched edge devices and remote management systems, such as FortiClient EMS or cPanel, could become a target of this wave of AI-automated attacks. - **Defense Recommendations**: Organizations are advised to immediately inventory and patch all internet-exposed edge devices and remote access systems, and to strengthen monitoring for abnormal API account creation and high-volume data exfiltration. - **Source**: SOCRadar () ### 2. Deepfake Job Application Scams Surge: Companies Face Crisis of "Ghost Applicants" Infiltrating Internal Systems - **What Happened**: With the proliferation of generative AI technology, job application and hiring fraud using Deepfakes is rapidly increasing. According to a survey report by identity security firm Hypr, up to 98% of respondents stated they have personally experienced applicant fraud. Many "ghost applicants" use real-time video face-swapping and voice cloning technologies to pass technical interviews, thereby gaining high-privilege tech or defense positions. - **Impact**: This has evolved from a failure in recruitment screening defenses into a major vulnerability in corporate Identity and Access Management (IAM). Any company that offers remote interviews and remote work privileges faces this threat. - **Defense Recommendations**: Companies should implement multi-factor authentication that includes liveness detection before issuing employee accounts and credentials, and establish continuous identity verification mechanisms. - **Source**: Biometric Update () ### 3. Linux Kernel Maintainers Warn: AI Code Review Tools Could Accelerate Exploit Development - **What Happened**: At the Linux Kernel Maintainers' Summit, developers discussed AI tools, such as Sashiko, an AI review system used to scan kernel patches. Although Sashiko can find real vulnerabilities missed by human reviewers, maintainers warned that the same AI technology also lowers the barrier to reverse-engineering patches, allowing attackers to quickly deduce the root cause of a vulnerability and assist in generating exploits. - **Impact**: The Linux kernel community and all enterprises relying on open-source software. Linus Torvalds pointed out that the real challenge lies in unqualified contributors submitting AI-generated patches that they themselves do not understand, which significantly increases the difficulty of maintenance. - **Defense Recommendations**: Open-source projects and internal corporate development teams should establish stricter code review processes, perform manual reviews of AI-generated patches, and avoid blindly trusting AI review results. - **Source**: LWN () ## Closing Remarks I'm Mu-Yen. What deserves our greatest vigilance today is that attackers and ghost employees are using AI to bypass traditional technical and identity defenses. Before logging off today, I recommend checking your company's internal remote interview processes and edge device patching status to ensure there are no overlooked blind spots. That's it for today's AI Security Daily. See you tomorrow. --- ## About this article and its author Originally published on [Mark Ku's Tech Notes](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/ai-security/ai-security-2026-10-26) License: [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — when reusing or quoting, credit the author and link back to the original ### About the author **[Mark Ku](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/author/mark-ku)** — Software engineer - 10+ years as a software engineer - Built North-American e-commerce and AI SaaS subscription billing ### Free tools built by the author All of these are free to use: - [Free PDF Sign Tool](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/pdf-sign): Online PDF sign tool — draw, type, or upload a signature, then drag, resize, and download. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded. - [VS Code Refactory](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/refactory): Refactory is a VS Code refactoring extension: 34 actions plus a 37-rule code-smell inspection layer with a Code Health dashboard, across 18 languages, backed by 534 tests. It learns your repo's conventions: where interfaces live, where DI is registered, whether 'use client' belongs. It ranks files by git churn × complexity so you know what to fix first, and hands any smell to the Claude Code already on your machine. Free to use, and your source never leaves your computer. - [DB-Kit Database Manager](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/db-kit): DB-Kit is a lightweight, cross-platform database manager built with Tauri + Rust + React. Manage MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, SQLite, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, Elasticsearch and RabbitMQ from one consistent interface: passwords encrypted in the OS keychain, SSH tunnels, full CRUD, a visual query builder, stacked multi-statement result sets, cross-connection data transfer, schema & data compare with sync SQL and schema snapshots, Excel / CSV import & export, visualized execution plans, ER diagrams, scheduled backups, SQL stress testing with p50–p99 latency percentiles, a 15-rule SQL review engine, Review & Run (AI review plus per-statement backups and an auto-generated rollback script), Kafka message browsing with monitoring & alerts, an SSH terminal with SFTP / FTP, Docker / Kubernetes, remote desktop (RDP / VNC / RustDesk), file / folder compare, stored procedure integration tests, six UI languages, a built-in AI assistant (a local CLI or any Anthropic / OpenAI-compatible API; natural-language SQL, AI review and tuning advice) and the dbk CLI. Free and open source (MIT), with installers for Windows, macOS and Linux. - [VS Code Super Mermaid](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/super-mermaid): Super Mermaid is a VS Code extension for beautiful Mermaid diagrams out of the box: auto-colored live preview, mouse pan & zoom, high-res PNG / SVG export, 21 templates and multiple themes. Free and open source (MIT). - [React Super Mermaid](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/react-super-mermaid): react-super-mermaid is an open-source React component library: render beautiful Mermaid diagrams with a single , with built-in colorful / sketch themes, pan & zoom, in-diagram search, and high-res SVG / PNG export. Lightweight, SSR-safe, fully typed. 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No sign-up, nothing uploaded to a server, and mermaid.live share links work as-is. - [React Intl Phone Number](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/react-intl-phone-number): react-intl-phone-number is an open-source React component: framework-agnostic and antd-free, with E.164 in/out, a searchable flag / country-code dropdown, configurable validation levels (strict / mobile-strict / loose), themeable CSS, and i18n — phone logic powered by google-libphonenumber. Lightweight and fully typed. Free and open source (MIT). - [Uptime Kuma Cluster](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/uptime-kuma-cluster): Turn single-node Uptime Kuma into a highly available cluster: OpenResty + Lua smart load balancing, shared MariaDB state, health checks and automatic failover, plus cluster-management REST APIs. One Docker Compose command to start. Free and open source (MIT). - [AI Podcast Cut](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/ai-podcast-cut): Drop in a recording and it removes fillers and stutters, levels loudness segment by segment, and sends a second agent to review every cut. Cut points snap to word boundaries and zero crossings, every splice gets a fade, and sentence-end breaths are preserved. Desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux. MIT licensed; the Windows installer bundles ffmpeg. - [AI Video Cut](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/ai-video-cut): Pick something in your video: type it (face, license plate, phone screen, logo), click points or drag a box, or let Claude Code / Codex pick it. AI Video Cut tracks it frame by frame, then mosaics or blurs it, recolors it, pins stickers and text to it, swaps a screen or poster for your own image or video, or removes it using background that other frames actually captured. Plus sequence editing, local captions and an AI assistant. Free, open-source (MIT) Windows desktop app (macOS / Linux experimental) that runs locally, nothing uploaded. - [open-pos restaurant POS](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/open-pos): One computer and one receipt printer is enough to open the shop. Your data lives on your own disk, no subscription, no lock-in, MIT licensed. Money is integer New Taiwan dollars with tax split by the statutory formula, so sales + tax always equals the total. Printing goes straight over ESC/POS on TCP 9100, with no vendor driver. Tauri + Rust + SQLite desktop app, v1.0 in development. - [.NET e-commerce API template](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/dotnet-ecommerce-api): An e-commerce backend API template built on .NET 10: Controller → Service → Repository layering, Autofac convention-based registration, SqlSugar for MySQL / MariaDB and SQL Server, Redis cache and message queue, Hangfire jobs, JWT auth, and an extensible payment provider module (ECPay, Newebpay). Apache 2.0. - [Open Token Monitor team AI usage](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/open-token-monitor): Collect token usage and equivalent cost from every employee's AI coding tools into a hub you host yourself: PostgreSQL, org roster, dashboards compared by company and department, and a reports API. Electron and Rust/Tauri clients upload every 30 minutes. MIT licensed, one Docker command. - [ai-security-monitor defensive security](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/ai-security-monitor): ai-security-monitor is a single Rust binary for your computers and servers. It finds unusual connections, rates them safe / unknown / suspicious / dangerous against 26 public threat-intel sources, and checks firewalls, open ports, vulnerabilities and 60 hardening rules. Security Hub shows the whole fleet, and Claude Code / Codex explain it in plain words. 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