Shankul Bhandare
In a startling cyberattack, the popular Australian news broadcaster 7News’ YouTube channel, which boasts 1.71 million subscribers, was hijacked to livestream an AI-generated depiction of Elon Musk promoting a cryptocurrency scam. The fraudulent streams garnered significant viewership, with one attracting 60,000 views and another 45,000 before they were removed.
During the livestreams, an AI-generated image of Musk was shown standing in front of a Tesla car, promoting a scheme promising to “double your assets” if viewers scanned a QR code and deposited money.
The scam message urged viewers, stating, “Let’s make this evening unforgettable and double your wealth with Tesla.” Following the removal of these streams, two additional videos depicting a Tesla Cybertruck launch event from 2023 were uploaded.
The primary YouTube channel of Seven has been taken down, and attempts to access the page result in a message stating it is unavailable. A spokesperson for Seven confirmed that “Seven is investigating and working with YouTube to resolve the situation as soon as possible.”
This incident adds to the challenges faced by the media company, which recently underwent layoffs affecting 150 staff members, including three senior executives, amid declining advertising revenues and anticipated reductions in commercial income from Meta.
Cryptocurrency scams have seen a surge in recent years, with notable figures such as billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest engaged in legal battles against tech giants like Facebook over fraudulent crypto advertisements using their likenesses.
Just this week, the social media accounts of rock band Metallica were hacked to promote a fake crypto token, “METAL,” before being reclaimed by the band’s management.
In 2020, prominent accounts including those of Elon Musk, US President Joe Biden, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates were similarly compromised to promote Bitcoin scams. Since July of last year, Australia’s corporate watchdog has shut down over 2,500 investment scam and phishing websites, many of which were related to cryptocurrency investments.
