Hackers targeting crypto executives at Binance using deepfakes

After deepfakes of celebs, politicians and CEOs of big tech companies, now executives in the crypto industry are being targeted with deep fake scams by cybercriminals.  

Patrick Hillmann, chief communications officer at crypto exchange Binance, found last week that cybercriminals had created his deep fake using data from news interviews and TV appearances he had made over the years. 

Hillman said in a blog post that there has been a spike in cases where hackers had impersonated several employees and executives at Binance on social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Telegram using their deep fakes.  

Hilman became suspicious after he received several online messages over the past month where he was thanked for meeting with project teams who had applied for opportunities to list their assets on Binance.com. “This was odd because I don’t have any oversight of or insight into Binance listings, nor had I met with any of these people before,” said Hillman.  

“This deep fake was refined enough to fool several highly intelligent crypto community members,” he added. 

Last week, Binance chief executive Changpeng Zhao also warned that the majority of accounts claiming to be Binance employees are fake. “LinkedIn has 7,000 profiles of Binance employees, of which only 50 or so are real,” he said in the Twitter post.  

Deepfake is a form of cloned content generated from photos and videos of an actual person. It can be a face or voice. Many of the deepfakes are created using sophisticated machine learning (ML) tools such as generative adversarial networks (GAN), where a discriminator algorithm is used to learn and detect inconsistencies, while the generator algorithm tries to avoid detection creating new versions of the deepfake.  

This makes the deepfake look more realistic and a powerful tool for cybercriminals. 

In July, US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a public advisory about scammers who are using deepfake to impersonate job candidates to trick companies into hiring them for remote roles. Companies during background checks found that information provided by some applicants was stolen and belonged to another individual. 

Deepfakes are also being used by companies and political parties for advertising. For instance, a deepfake of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Manoj Tiwari politician was circulated in the run up to Delhi Assembly elections in 2020. The deepfake was created by BJP to target voters in 20 Indian languages. Similarly, a deepfake of actor Shahrukh Khan was created by Cadbury for an ad where the actor is shown endorsing small business with their names and specialities.