Deepfakes with Elon Musk Are Used to Advertise the Fraudulent BitVex Platform
Experts have discovered that scammers are using deepfakes of Elon Musk and other well-known cryptocurrency proponents to advertise the BitVex platform, which steals deposited funds.
According to Bleeping Computer, this scam cryptocurrency platform claims to be owned by Elon Musk, who allegedly created a website where anyone can earn up to 30% of their cryptocurrency deposits.Let me remind you that we wrote that Fake SpaceX YouTube channels lured from users over $150,000.
The BitVex spin-off campaign began earlier this month, with attackers creating new or hacking existing YouTube accounts and posting fake videos of Elon Musk, Katie Wood, Brad Garlinghouse, Michael Saylor and Charles Hoskinson. Journalists say dozens of YouTube channels have been hacked to promote this scam.
In such videos, celebrities allegedly give interviews and talk about BitVex, but in fact these videos are modified – they are deepfakes, where a person’s voice is faked and superimposed on a video sequence taken from the other sources.
An example of such a fake can be seen below, in this video, Musk allegedly advertises a fraudulent site and says that he has invested $ 50 million in the platform.
If you go to the BitVex website, it will be obvious to almost anyone that this is a scam. For example, the site claims that Elon Musk is the CEO of the platform, which is also backed by Cathy Wood of Ark Invest and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
Visitors are prompted to register a BitVex (bitvex[.]org or bitvex[.]net) account to access the platform. After logging in, the site will display a dashboard where users can deposit various cryptocurrencies into an account, select an investment plan or withdraw funds.
As with other cases of this type of scam, the dashboard will display recent withdrawals of various cryptocurrencies to make the site look legitimate, as shown below. These numbers are actually generated using JavaScript by randomly choosing an amount and one of five cryptocurrencies (Cardano, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Ripple or Binance Coin). Each time the page is refreshed, these “conclusions” will be different.