It’s hilariously horrible. A deepfake video of Elon Musk was discovered marketing cryptocurrency scams.
A new cryptocurrency fraud involving a deepfake video of Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been discovered by experts.
Threat actors have built a phoney cryptocurrency exchange website called BitVex that claims to offer investors up to 30% returns on their crypto investments when, in reality, all they do is steal the money that is put.
The site, bitvex[.]org, was still up and functioning at the time of publication. “We supply you with the most profitable and dependable trading contracts, making daily payments on all contracts in bitcoin,” the site adds, explaining what makes this “exchange” unique. Start trading cryptocurrencies and stablecoins today and get paid the next day.”
It also includes endorsements from CZ (Binance’s founder and CEO) and Cathie Wood (founder, CEO and CIO of Ark Invest). The CEO was listed as Elon Musk. The site also details “earnings” produced by the exchange’s “users” to make the deception more plausible.
Stupid deepfake
Elon Musk, the eccentric billionaire and entrepreneur, is also shown discussing the business in a deepfake video. The video adds very nothing to the validity of the whole ordeal, as the multimedia production is hilariously awful.
Nonetheless, the scammers have posted it on YouTube, which means it can break into other people’s channels to spread it further, with an Arabic gaming video channel already discovered to be distributing it.
The fact that the effort brought in modest earnings for the fraudsters proves that any job, including scamming, takes some aptitude. With the exception of the Bitcoin address, which at press time has no more than $1.4k in the cryptocurrency, BleepingComputer discovered a variety of wallet addresses that the “exchange” utilises, and no payments have been received.
Rather of keeping their assets on an exchange, cryptocurrency investors should move them to a non-custodial wallet. Robust passwords and security keys should be used to protect their accounts, and their equipment should be kept up to date, protected by firewalls, and equipped with a strong antivirus solution.
With the finest password managers available, you can keep your funds safe.