Crypto scammers hack the South Korean government’s YouTube channel

Hackers managed to access the account and launch a broadcast with Elon Musk’s deepfake, dedicated to cryptocurrencies

05.09.2022 - 08:35

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What’s new? On Saturday, September 3, unknown hackers hacked into the YouTube channel of the South Korean government, renamed it SpaceX Invest and posted a broadcast with Elon Musk’s deepfake discussing cryptocurrencies. South Korean news agency Yonhap reports about it.

News on the Yonhap website

What else is known about the incident? According to a spokesperson for South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, scammers managed to compromise the government’s YouTube account credentials. Three hours and fifty minutes after the incident, the authorities managed to regain access to the channel, and law enforcement is currently investigating the hack.

According to Yonhap, the attack followed the hacking of the YouTube channel of the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) on Thursday, September 1. The agency’s channel had 509 000 subscribers and is currently unavailable.

In August 2022, cryptocurrency exchange Binance warned of a new type of crypto fraud using deepfakes. Scammers impersonated Binance cryptocurrency exchange chief communications officer (CCO), Patrick Hillmann, in video calls to project representatives who were promised help with listing on the platform for a fee. The attackers chose Zoom to make the calls and also used the top manager’s deepfake.

In July, hackers hacked into the British Army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts to promote two NFT collections, Bapescaln and The Possessed. On YouTube, they posted promotional videos depicting the head of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk.

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