Scammers using AI tools to steal crypto via deepfakes and wallet drainers
AI tools aren’t just helping you keep on top of your emails, they’re giving scammers the edge in stealing your crypto. Whether it’s through giving a boost to traditional “social engineering” scams, or writing crypto-stealing code disguised as a legitimate Javascript package, AI is helping to part users from their tokens while the operators sit back and watch the profits roll in. Trust nobody According to Joey Santoro, the decentralized finance (DeFi) developer behind Fei Protocol and the ERC-4626 (Tokenized Vaults) token standard, a friend recently lost $2 million to a “sophisticated” deepfake scam. Santoro claims that an audio deepfake of Paul Faecks, founder of stablecoin-focused blockchain Plasma, was used to pitch an advisor role, with information that “perfectly matched [the friend’s] profile.” During the call, the victim opened a file (despite it being blocked by security software on a first attempt) which then “ successfully got access to pa...