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A scammer’s favourite tactic is pretending to be a company or CEO through fake email accounts or social media profiles. However, a group of fraudsters went above and beyond. They used AI to create a “deepfake” of an executive at cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
The scheme’s masterminds went after Binance’s Chief Communication Officer, Patrick Hillmann, who detailed what happened in a blog post. “It turns out that a sophisticated hacking team utilized past news interviews and television appearances over the years to construct a ‘deep fake’ of me,” Patrick Hillmann explained.
Deepfakes can replace a celebrity’s face with yours or alter existing footage so that the subject’s lips appear to say something else.
The hackers were able to impersonate Hillmann in virtual meetings with cryptocurrency developers. The deepfake was convincing enough to trick a cryptocurrency developer into sending them $1,000 in Ethereum. The victim only realized he had been scammed when he saw Hillmann’s natural face in a video call, not the AI-generated one.
When the Binance executive discovered the scam, he had already started receiving thank-you messages from people who wanted him to add their cryptocurrency project on Binance. “It was strange, as I have no control over Binance listings and had never met any of these individuals before,” Hillmann wrote.
Hillman wrote a blog warning cryptocurrency developers to be wary of communications that seem to originate from Binance.
“Beyond this most recent occurrence, hackers have begun impersonating Binance personnel and executives on platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, etc.,” he added.
The incident is the latest example of how scammers use AI to perpetrate their crimes. In January, a group of scammers used AI to generate realistic faces of celebrities like Elon Musk and Bill Gates to trick people into sending cryptocurrency.
As AI technology improves, it will only become more accessible for scammers to create convincing deepfakes to trick people. So, be extra careful when interacting with people online, even if they seem to be who they say they are.
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