Journalists from discovered the , which claims to use neural networks and artificial intelligence to create fake IDs. Researchers tested OnlyFake and successfully passed KYC (Know Your Customer) verification on several cryptocurrency exchanges. The OnlyFake site is currently unavailable, and the service’s operators claim that it is not designed to forge documents and that their claims about its capabilities are false.
OnlyFake offers the generation of realistic fake driver’s licenses and passports for 26 countries, including Russia, USA, Canada, UK, Australia and several EU countries, accepting payment in several cryptocurrencies. Moreover, the price of one fake document is only 15 US dollars.
In addition, OnlyFake offers customers the opportunity to make their fake documents even more convincing. For example, changing the metadata of an image, since this information can be verified by identity services or humans. Thus, you can indicate that a photo was taken from a specific device (for example, Apple iPhone 11 Pro, Huawei BKL-L09), the date and time of its creation, and also fake GPS coordinates.
Additionally, in addition to uploading their own photo, users can choose from a variety of ready-made images from the OnlyFake archive. It is argued that these photographs were not generated by artificial intelligence.
“The era of document editing in Photoshop is coming to an end. We present to you the document generator version 3.0 – Onlyfake. This tool has been developed for almost a year and a half,” is the advertising slogan on the OnlyFake Telegram channel.
The service says it uses specialized “generators” capable of creating up to 20,000 documents per day.
In addition, the owner of the service, known under the pseudonym John Wick, told reporters from 404 Media that hundreds of documents can be created simultaneously using pre-prepared data from Excel spreadsheets. According to him, he began creating document templates about three years ago, and the OnlyFake service generator itself, according to the Telegram channel, has been in development for “almost a year and a half.”
According to researchers, the Bitcoin address associated with OnlyFake has received more than $23,500 worth of cryptocurrency so far. However, given the possibility of payment in other cryptocurrencies, the income of service operators is likely to significantly exceed this amount.
In addition, on Telegram, users share their success in using fake documents to bypass checks on various crypto exchanges and services, such as Kraken, Bybit, Bitget, Huobi, and PayPal.
John Wick also told reporters that documents created by the service can be used to bypass checks on various sites and exchanges, including Binance, Revolut, Wise, Kraken, Bybit, Payoneer, Huobi, Airbnb, OKX and Coinbase.
404 Media co-founder Joseph Cox personally verified these claims by OnlyFake operators by creating a fake British passport using his photo and a California driver’s license using the service.
The journalist used a fake British passport, an image of which he received, to pass a KYC check on the OKX cryptocurrency exchange. The exchange requested a photo of Cox’s ID taken with a smartphone camera. Surprisingly, the process was successful, despite the journalist not having a physical document. He said that he simply pointed the camera at the generated image of the fake OnlyFake passport on the laptop screen, and the system successfully recognized it and then asked him to take a selfie. Thus, the identity was confirmed.
For scammers, the appeal of a service like OnlyFake is that these supposedly AI-generated fake documents can be used to register for online services that require identity verification. Various web resources, including banks, cryptocurrency exchanges, and professionals in various fields, such as lawyers or accountants, often ask for at least a scan or photo of an ID. Even some social networks may require identification documents in certain situations.
Incident information security expert Abhishek Mathew, who also monitored this service, told reporters that real criminals use OnlyFake as follows:
“Many people use this service for carding, creating fake bank accounts, and also to unlock their cryptocurrency accounts, including Binance, where identity verification is required.”
The said OKX exchange uses Jumio for its identity verification process. According to Stuart Wells, CTO of Jumio, “The enhanced identity verification process uses tools to scan documents using mobile devices or webcams, allowing security teams to cross-check against trusted sources and reduce the number of fake profiles and malicious activity. “
However, when 404 Media reported the possibility of fooling the verification process with a fake generated passport, Jumio said it could only comment on its technology and not OKX’s processes.
In turn, OKX commented on the following:
“OKX strongly denies any allegations, representations, or insinuations that it condones, accepts, or ignores fraudulent activity and is actively working with internal teams and an external partner to investigate these allegations. We are committed to proactively combating fraud on our platform and striving to maintain the highest standards. It is clear that the misuse of artificial intelligence for fraudulent activities is an evolving industry-wide problem that OKX is working comprehensively to address.”
At the same time, although OnlyFake claims to use “neural networks” to create documents, journalists note that they have not found convincing evidence of the use of generative artificial intelligence tools.
“I don’t know what exactly is going on here, but I suspect that they are using some kind of technology to insert/replace an image into the license and ID template,” Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and one of the presenters, told the publication world experts in digital image manipulation. “If they used generative AI to create the entire document, they would have a hard time dealing with the problems in the background.”
Interestingly, shortly after the publication of Cox’s article, the OnlyFake website stopped opening, and a statement appeared on the Telegram channel from service operators who claimed that reports about the use of OnlyFake to forge documents are fake and “complete nonsense”:
“The news says that our generator is being used to forge documents. This is complete nonsense. This has never happened before. At a minimum, because it cannot be used to forge documents, the message says. — We would like to remind you that we are against any illegal use of images created using our site. We are against fraud and harming others. All generated images on the site are for legal use only.”
“Our team only created an image generation tool and never used it for illegal purposes. We have also never accepted orders related to illegal activities. Rumors are circulating online that the generator is allegedly used for money laundering. This is not true, and users can confirm this. We also want to clarify that it is impossible to forge a document using a generator. To forge a document, you need to recreate the hologram and many other security elements from scratch, and also have a template that is 50 times more detailed than ours,” reads another message from the OnlyFake operators.
Telegram also reports that the site is undergoing “technical work” and should be operational by the end of the week, now with checks “to counter illegal activities.”