Synthetic Souls: How Criminals are Hijacking Identity in Modern Crime

Identity: once the bedrock of trust—now just another data point to be manipulated. In today's digital underground, identities are stitched together from stolen scraps, deepfakes, and AI-generated personas. Welcome to the world of synthetic identities—where fraud has evolved into a scalable business model.
In this talk, you'll dive into the anatomy of identity crime: how synthetic IDs are built, sold, and used by organized criminal networks to fuel fraud at industrial scale. We'll unpack real-world tactics, explore how deepfake tech and AI are reshaping identity-based attacks, and expose the twisted innovation cycles driving this threat landscape.
Forget the usual buzzwords—this isn't a session on passwords or MFA. This is about stepping into the mind of a modern fraudster and asking: what they're afraid of. More importantly, we'll cover how OWASP members and developers can shift from passive defenders to active disruptors in the identity war.