Scammers are as soon as once more capitalizing on the recognition of Elon Musk’s synthetic intelligence chatbot Grok, with pretend tokens as soon as once more rising as a part of potential phishing assaults.
A pockets linked to former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao obtained 90 million pretend Grok (GROK) tokens on April 21, according to blockchain safety agency PeckShield.
The tokens are “doubtless a rip-off,” for the reason that “deployer distributed it to a number of addresses by way of multisend,” PeckShield mentioned.
The X platform’s Grok AI chatbot has no official cryptocurrency and no plans to launch one sooner or later.
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Pretend tokens associated to the Grok token first emerged in 2023 when a scammer deployed an ERC-20 Grok token on Ethereum, which led to an over 90% drop after the deployer offered 0.5% of the full provide, in response to blockchain information visualization platform, Bubblemaps.
Scammers typically capitalize on the credibility of social media platforms, massive manufacturers, or celebrities like Elon Musk to domesticate a way of belief with victims.
Meta was probably the most mimicked model in phishing experiences filed all through 2024, in response to a report by e mail safety supplier Mailsuite.
Coinbase was the most impersonated brand by scammers within the crypto business, however Meta was focused by over 25 instances as many scammers because the cryptocurrency alternate.
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Elon Musk-related scams and faux cash see a resurgence
Elon Musk-related scams and faux tokens are seeing a resurgence as scammers proceed vying for buyers’ crypto holdings.
A pretend announcement claiming to be an official “AI Elon Musk stream” making a gift of $20,000 price of cryptocurrency was flagged on April 14 by crypto restoration and safety advocate, Denis Thomas.
A number of different Elon Musk-related memecoins have been launched on the BNB Sensible Chain in current weeks, in response to a rip-off detector platform, Coinspeedrun.
Phishing scams like address poisoning contain tricking victims into sending belongings to fraudulent pockets addresses.
Phishing scams cost the crypto business over $1 billion throughout 296 incidents in 2024, making them a significant risk, in response to blockchain safety agency CertiK.
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