AI can fool voice recognition used to verify identity by Centrelink and Australian tax office
Exclusive: Voiceprint program used by millions of Australians to access data held by government agencies shown to have a serious security flaw
A voice identification system used by the Australian government for millions of people has a serious security flaw, a Guardian Australia investigation has found.
Centrelink and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) both give people the option of using a “voiceprint”, along with other information, to verify their identity over the phone, allowing them to then access sensitive information from their accounts.
But following reports that an AI-generated voice trained to sound like a specific person could be used to access phone-banking services overseas, Guardian Australia has confirmed that the voiceprint system can also be fooled by an AI-generated voice.
Using just four minutes of audio, a Guardian Australia journalist was able to generate a clone of their own voice and was then able to use this, combined with their customer reference number, to gain access to their own Centrelink self-service account.
