New trick to steal your cryptos: celebrities + deepfakes

Even during a bearish cryptocurrency market, scammers and hackers are lurking in the shadows of the Internet. Now, they’re using legit videos of different celebrities (Elon Musk, especially) to transform them into deepfakes and steal their cryptos.

In other words, they’re using AI deep learning technology to create fake videos and faces (deepfakes). This way, the public ends up seeing and listening to some important celebrities talking about, and promoting, fraudulent investment platforms. Once the potential users believe in the videos, they’re more inclined to transfer their crypto to scammers.

This is the case of the platform BitVex, described by Bleeping Computer. On their webpage, BitVex promises daily payments thanks to supposed trading with Forex and cryptocurrencies:

“BitVex investment platform combines trading with daily payments and margin trading on Forex with cryptocurrencies, which makes it possible to increase your investment portfolio (…) BitVex investment platform offers a wide range of trading contracts. Trading contracts with payments in the most popular and proven cryptocurrencies, as well as with the possibility of withdrawing in USDT stablecoin, a fixed on the dollar.”

However, the red flags start in the webpage itself: it’s quite simple, without any professional design. Besides, they state that Elon Musk is their CEO, and also include Changpeng Zhao (Binance CEO) and Cathie Wood (Ark Invest CEO) on the team —without any specific roles. There’s no other information about the platform itself (no more team members, no terms and conditions, no social media, and no other resources).

Stealing cryptos with deepfakes

The official website of BitVex doesn’t produce much trust, but the fake videos they prepared could catch some unaware investors. By using deep learning, it’s possible to change images and faces in movement, making it look like the people appearing in the video are the original ones, talking about something.

The authors behind BitVex prepared some deepfakes of Elon Musk, Cathie Wood, Brad Garlinghouse (Ripple CEO), Michael Saylor (MicroStrategy CEO), and Charles Hoskinson (Cardano founder). All of them are (supposedly) promoting BitVex as a good investment platform.

At least, the video isn’t very natural. It seems weird from the beginning, and that’s another red flag for the users. The deepfakes aren’t perfect. In addition, these scammers are also hacking several YouTube channels to introduce these fake videos and other ones to promote the scam.

So, if you notice that something’s wrong with a video, or a channel changes its usual topics suddenly to promote cryptocurrency investment, that’s probably a scam. To date, the BitVex scammers have stolen around $4,000 ($1,523 in BTC, $1,968 in ETH, $100 in TRC-20 USDT, $253 in DOGE, and $103 in DOT). That is, of course, counting from the wallets we’re aware of. It could be much more in the end.

It’s time to pay attention to the videos you’re consuming. Never receive investment advice from the Internet, and do your own research (DYOR).   

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