Along with the latest technological developments, virtual scams became highly sophisticated; to the point that cybercriminals are already capable of replicating the image and voice of trusted people to create audiovisual content of a highly manipulative nature.
YouTube is a breeding ground for these operations, since recently it was seen how hackers managed to hack the channels of some content creators and make audiences believe that they were watching videos from another account/person.
To give an example, recently cybercriminals used the identity of Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, to viralize fraudulent content in which he was shown recommending an investment that in reality did not exist and whose ultimate goal was to steal banking information from interested. The broadcast was made from an account that did not actually belong to the billionaire businessman, but to another YouTuber with a large follower base.
Youtube: how deepfake scams work
Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter).
Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and its derived applications, scammers manage to develop what are known as “deepfakes”; These are fake videos, images or audio that look authentic, but were actually created synthetically.
Thus, it is possible to use technology to create a fraudulent version of a person of interest; to make it seem like you say or do something that never happened in real life.
Once cybercriminals managed to manipulate the sayings and/or actions of a person like Elon Musk in video format, they then turned to YouTube and hacked the account of a well-known content creator; to take advantage of its massive reach and thus viralize the deepfake in question.
This is what happened with the owner of Tesla, who could be seen falsely promoting a cryptocurrency investment strategy that resulted in a dangerous scam for all participants.