Tag Archive for: fakes

Elon Musk deep fakes promote new cryptocurrency scam

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Elon Musk

Cryptocurrency scammers are using deep fake videos of Elon Musk and other prominent cryptocurrency advocates to promote a BitVex trading platform scam that steals deposited currency.

This fake BitVex cryptocurrency trading platform claims to be owned by Elon Musk, who created the site to allow everyone to earn up to 30% returns on their crypto deposits.

This scam campaign started earlier this month with threat actors creating or hacking existing YouTube accounts to host deep fake videos of Elon Musk, Cathie Wood, Brad Garlinghouse, Michael Saylor, and Charles Hoskinson.

These videos are legitimate interviews modified with deep fake technology to use the person’s voice in a script provided by the threat actors.

An example of one of the scam videos can be seen below, where Elon promotes the new scam site and says he invested $50 million into the platform.

However, if you look carefully, you will see that the deep fake synchronizes the person’s talking to the threat actor’s script, which is so silly as to be comical.

How do we know this is a scam?

While it is obvious that the interviews have been altered to simulate Elon Musk’s voice to promote the BitVex trading platform, numerous other clues show that this is a scam.

Many YouTube channels promoting this trading platform have been hacked to suddenly show YouTube videos or YouTube Shorts that promote the BitVex trading site.

For example, a YouTube channel that displayed gaming videos in Arabic suddenly began showing a series of YouTube Shorts that promoted the BitVex scam. In addition, BleepingComputer has found dozens of other YouTube channels hijacked similarly to promote this scam.

YouTube Shorts promoting BitVex on hacked YouTube channels
YouTube Shorts promoting BitVex on hacked YouTube channels
Source: BleepingComputer

Once you visit the BitVex trading site itself, it becomes more apparent that this is a scam.

For example, the site claims that Elon Musk is the CEO of the trading platform and contains endorsements from Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.

Site claiming that Elon Musk is the CEO
Site claiming that Elon Musk is the CEO
Source: BleepingComputer

To use the BitVex platform, users must register an account at bitvex[.]org or bitvex[.]net to access the investment platform.

Once you log in, the…

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Cryptocurrency scammers turn to deep fakes to snare victims

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Earlier this month, the consumer watchdog launched legal action against Facebook owner Meta for publishing scam cryptocurrency ads featuring well-known Australians, including former businessman Dick Smith, TV personality David Koch and mining magnate Andrew Forrest.

David Cook, an expert in information warfare and cybersecurity management at Edith Cowan University, has recently received reports of cryptocurrency rorts that involved scammers creating deep fakes of ordinary people.

He said these deep fakes ⁠– which use artificial intelligence and machine learning to create fake videos and images ⁠– were more convincing when they centred on regular people.

“When you target celebrities, it’s almost a theatre because you will see someone say something outlandish,” he said.

“The ring of truth works for mum and dad investors because it is much more believable when it’s just an ordinary person because you don’t question that theatre side of it. You just take it as that’s a person saying what they believe.”

He said the deep fake video of Miranda could be created in as little as half an hour using free online software.

“Deep fakes weaponise your own imagery and your own voice against you,” he said.

The hackers are understood to have gained access to Miranda’s account by bypassing her work’s virtual private network, which was only recently updated with two-step authentication.

She believes they gleaned data of her face and voice by accessing her Microsoft teams meetings and then transformed the material into a convincing deep fake video.

While many of Miranda’s followers were suspicious of the deep fake video because the movement of her lips did not match the audio, at least one acquaintance was almost duped after they responded to the hacker.

Miranda smashed her phone with a hammer when she first discovered she had been hacked and panicked that someone had been in her house, filming her. She reported the matter to police and the Australian Cyber Security Centre.

The experience left her feeling violated, and she wants to ensure no one goes through a similar ordeal.

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The Office of the eSafety Commissioner is concerned about a rise in deep fakes and said the tools…

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DoD Budgets for the Cyber Fight Against Deep Fakes

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If you tuned into social media recently, you might have caught a video of Tom Cruise swinging a golf club, performing a magic trick, and genuinely acting somewhat goofy. However, there was nothing genuine about it-the video was artificially created and perfected using generative adversarial networks (GAN). This technology combines generating a product from a database of images and videos of a person with a system of checks and balances to improve the quality to the point of passing as real. This process is analogous to the human version of a counterfeiter producing S100.00 bills while the forensic analysis with the magnifying glass and chemistry tools continues to find flaws in them until they are acceptable to pass out to the public.

Bad Intentions Make Deep Fakes a Serious Threat

The creator of the Tom Cruise video, Chris Ume, is a visual effect artist who has combined his talent with deep learning artificial intelligence experts to come up with the multi-disciplinary perfect storm of science and creativity. Unfortunately, Ume’s world of deep fake videos is running parallel to those with malevolent intent. Bot accounts, fake photos, and videos can ruin people’s lives, incite panic, impact public perceptions of current affairs, and even be a threat to national security. Fake videos of politicians acting inappropriately, CEOs predicting financial calamity, and famous people in pornographic scenes are becoming more and more prevalent. This scourge on visual media has been going on for years with the invention of such programs as Photoshop, but the sophistication level has reached immense complexity. In response, laws and legislation have been passed recently to combat the problem.

DoD Budgets for the Fight

Congress included language in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act that reads as follows:

SEC. 589F. STUDY ON CYBEREXPLOITATION AND ONLINE DECEPTION OF MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES AND THEIR FAMILIES. (a) STUDY.—Not later than 150 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense shall complete a study on…….(8) An intelligence assessment of the threat posed by foreign government and non-state actors creating or using machine-manipulated…

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Android malware fakes phone shutdown to steal data

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Next time you turn off your Android phone, you might want take the battery out just to be certain.

Security vendor AVG has spotted a malicious program that fakes the sequence a user sees when they shut off their phone, giving it freedom to move around on the device and steal data.

When someone presses the power button on a device, a fake dialog box is shown. The malware then mimics the shutdown animation and appears to be off, AVG’s mobile malware research team said in a blog post.

“Although the screen is black, it is still on,” they said. “While the phone is in this state, the malware can make outgoing calls, take pictures and perform many other tasks without notifying the user.”

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