Binance Chief Communications Director Patrick Hillmann claimed to have been targeted by a hacker. According to Hillmann, the hackers impersonated him through a video montage known as “deepfake”.
As reported by an article published on Thursday (18), the scam consists of asking users for money in advance in order to promote cryptocurrency projects that are about to be listed on Binance. The hackers created a hologram of Hillmann that contacted potential investors via Zoom video calls.
Given that Hillmann’s Hologram was completely interactive (due to the implementation of modern A.I. deepfake technologies), that scam could seem very convincing to unsuspected users.
“This deep fake was refined enough to fool several highly intelligent crypto community members,” Patrick Hillmann wrote in a Binance blog post.
Hillmann said that lately, he had been receiving messages thanking him for his dedication in meetings regarding Binance Token listings.
“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.”
Binance Chief Executive Warned Users About Scammers Before
Earlier this month, Changpeng Zhao, the chief executive of Binance, similarly warned users.
Zhao stated that the vast majority of LinkedIn accounts posing as Binance employees are false.
On Twitter, Zhao warned Binance users:
“LinkedIn has 7,000 profiles of Binance employees, of which only 50 or so are real,”
The Dangers of Deepfake
“Deepfake” is a modern type of technology where artificial intelligence is able to recreate a person’s look and voice through data collection of pictures and videos.
That type of technology is so advanced that it is even possible to recreate a person’s unique facial features as they talk.
In a world where fake news spread like wildfire, experts worry about deepfake technology eventually being used to influence democratic elections in the future.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the US released a public statement in July regarding scammers utilizing deepfake to pose as job applicants. The FBI stated that Scammers would use this technology in an effort to trick businesses into hiring them for remote positions.
