Just a few days after rapper 50 Cent’s website and social accounts were used by hackers to promote a fake cryptocurrency, it looks like something similar is happening to Elon Musk.
A YouTube Live video today displayed a video of Musk with an AI-generated version of his voice suggesting that users go to a website to deposit Ethereum, Dogecoin, or Bitcoin, Engadget reports. The video clip promised viewers that depositing their cryptocurrency on the site would “automatically send back double the amount of the cryptocurrency you deposited.”
The stream ran for 5 hours, and at one point had over 30,000 concurrent viewers, bringing it to the top of YouTube’s Live Now recommendations. Both the video and the account associated with it have since been removed from YouTube.
It’s not surprising that hackers chose Musk to deepfake to promote the site. Tweets from Musk have been known to have a significant impact on the crypto market, especially with meme coins such as Dogecoin, thanks to his dedicated following.
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In 2020, Musk was one of several high-profile Twitter users—a group that also included Bill Gates, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden—who was briefly hacked to promote a Bitcoin scam.
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