Enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies made Elon Musk the first (or second, depending on the weeks) richest man in the world, an ideal mirror for the larks of the web. In the sense that he and his Tesla, the company of futuristic electric vehicles, have become a malicious tool to attract the attention of users. And lead them into error, to one of the many scams of this kind circulating online. But in this case it is particularly insidious.
To discover it was Bitdefender Labs which in a research illustrated two distinct spam campaigns that offer the possibility of receiving Bitcoin, that is the most famous cryptocurrency in the world at the center of Musk’s loves (but also some recent distances), in exchange for a small share of bitcoin. The method of the scam is basic: the victim receives an e-mail which, in one case with a photo of Musk, invites him to send a small amount of bitcoin to a predetermined wallet. The promise? Return in exchange double the amount paid or a not well quantified share, part of a “giveaway”, that is, a return program by the wealthy entrepreneur. Of course, users who fall for it and send bitcoins to the indicated wallet receive nothing in return.
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Musk overcame the coronavirus
Musk is a favorite face for this type of crime campaign. According to Bitdefenderin fact, in particular in recent weeks, the owner of SpaceX, co-founder of PayPal and head of Neuralink, among other companies, has been used to send tens of thousands of malicious e-mails to users. The news? Covid-19 themed scams have even been overcome, which during the months of the pandemic they have seen a real boom.
They are two different campaigns (one uses Musk’s photo, the other goes through Tesla and it looks more like a charity campaign) but both leverage on two aspects that have attracted the attention of public opinion in recent months: the growing fame of Musk intertwined with his continuous stances, sometimes cryptic especially via Twitter, with respect to cryptocurrencies (from Bitcoin to Dogecoin) and which have influenced their prices. In the recent collapse of Bitcoin, for example, it is impossible not to consider Musk’s step backwards from the decision of accept Bitcoins as a payment method to buy a Tesla car: “Cryptocurrencies are an excellent idea in many ways and we believe they have a great future, but it cannot be at such a high price for the environment.” As we had explained in the pastin fact, the activity of “mining”, that is the computer production of cryptocurrencies, is in many cases very energy-intensive.
Where the malicious emails come from
Going into the specifics of the campaigns identified by Bitdefender and taking off starting from mid-May, the first takes advantage of the name and image of a sparkling Musk and promises to receive 5 thousand dollars in Bitcoin for free: spam is sent via an email with a pdf attached that provides instructions on how to participate in this rich opportunity. 79.72% of emails appear to be sent from IP addresses in Germany, targeting users in Europe and North America. 11% of emails reached users in the UK, 79.26% in Sweden and 9.22% in the US.
In the second campaign, the Tesla brand is used to communicate that the car manufacturer, known for the production of electric cars, has decided to give away 750 million dollars in BTC. They are present in the email all the information you need to proceed to send a small amount of cryptocurrency to receive more in return. In this case 16.73% of spam emails come from IP addresses located in Brazil, 14.15% in Russia, 6.32% in Indonesia, 4.91% in Turkey, 4.56% in Ukraine, 4.44% in Spain, 3.68% in the United States, 3.63% in Italy, 2.16% in India, 2.11% in Romania and 1.93% in Holland.
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