Elon Musk has already publicly expressed his support for cryptocurrencies, but the billionaire was recently impersonated by cybercriminals who hacked an Australian radio station in an attempt to target gullible investors. Over the past few years, Musk has shaken up the crypto market through posts on X (formerly Twitter). Now, criminals are using his popularity to target crypto investors, especially those who take the billionaire's market comments seriously. Musk's deepfake videos promoting scam tokens, fake airdrops, and bogus crypto schemes are spreading across web apps.
Elon Musk deepfake videos shown via Australian broadcaster
According to a report by News.com.au, cybercriminals managed to hack The Seven Network's (popularly known as Channel Seven) YouTube channel on Thursday following layoffs at the Australian broadcaster. After gaining control of the broadcaster's account, hackers showed deepfake videos of Musk appearing to say he's giving away crypto tokens.
In the doctored video, the head of Tesla can be heard vouching that he will return to investors twice what they transmit to a malicious address. According to the report, the live stream of this deepfake video got more than 150,000 views on the YouTube channel committed to the Seven channel.
Screenshots of the deepfake version of Musk promoting the fraudulent crypto scheme on the YouTube channel, renamed by criminals to “Tesla Channel” during the hack, have surfaced on social media. One of the screenshots also shows that a QR code was displayed on the screen along with a slogan “Scan or regret”. YouTube has yet to publicly react to the development.
@elonmusk cryptoScam live using your image on YouTube now.
The channel says “7NEWS Australia”
It appears as Tesla's channel after you click on the video when it starts.
YouTube has been reported, but there is no “Scam” category to report in the dropdown menu.
Good luck fixing it and closing it. pic.twitter.com/M6pG47xS2M— Greg Watts (@MeggaWatti_) June 27, 2024
Earlier this month, when SpaceX conducted the launch of its Starship rocket, at least 35 fake videos of Musk were broadcast on YouTube. In these videos, the scammers showed a fake video of Musk promoting a scam crypto scheme asking people to send crypto funds to a wallet address to get double in return.
Over 100,000 people watching a SpaceX Starship Launch scam LIVE on YouTube right now using a convincing deepfake AI of Elon Musk on stage trying to push crypto during the launch. Why not @TeamYouTube do something about it? YouTube just ignores all reports and it's ridiculous! :hand-facepalming: pic.twitter.com/LxOt0H89Ms
— Barnacles Nerdgasm (@Barnacules) March 14, 2024
How Musk has reacted to previous deepfake videos
It's been a while since Musk has reacted to these deepfake videos of him promoting crypto scams. In 2022, he responded after seeing one of those fake videos exploiting his identity. “Yeah. Definitely not me,” the billionaire said in response to a now-deleted post.
Musk has not directly commented on deepfakes since that post, but has often spoken about his intention to remove bot accounts that spread false information about crypto and politics among other topics on X (formerly Twitter). It should be noted that the billionaire has not yet been able to do so.
Earlier this month, Binance co-founder Yi He asked Musk to improve X's privacy and security measures after he found his identity being misused to promote a fake crypto token on X.
