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Tag: telegram

  • The Real-Time Deepfake Romance Scams Have Arrived

    The Real-Time Deepfake Romance Scams Have Arrived

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    The Yahoo Boys are experienced scammers—and they openly brag about it. Photos and videos of their conning and recruitment can be found all across social media, from Facebook to TikTok. However, the cybercriminals, who have links back to Nigerian prince email scams, are arguably their most open on Telegram.

    In groups containing thousands of members, Yahoo Boys organize and advertise their individual skills for a smorgasbord of scams. They’re skilled social manipulators, who can have long-lasting impacts on their victims. Business email compromise, crypto scams, and impersonation scams are all touted in hundreds of posts per day. Members claim to be selling photo and video editing skills and entire albums of explicit photographs that can be used to build a convincing persona. Fake IDs and legitimate-looking social media profiles are for sale. Scam “scripts” are free to download.

    “The Yahoo Boys have elements of organized crime and disorganized crime,” says Paul Raffile, an intelligence analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute, who has investigated Yahoo Boys sextorting teenagers and driving them towards suicide. “They don’t have a leader, they don’t have a governance structure.” Rather, Raffile says, they organize in clusters and share advice and tips online. Telegram did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment about Yahoo Boys’ channels, but the three channels no longer appear to be accessible.

    The digital con artists started using deepfakes as part of their romance scams around May 2022, says Maimon. “What folks were doing was just posting videos of themselves, changing their appearance, and then sending them to the victim—trying to lure them to talk to them,” he says. Since then, they’ve moved on.

    To create their videos, the Yahoo Boys are using a handful of different software and apps. WIRED is not naming the specific software, to limit people’s ability to copy the attacks. However, the tools they are using are often advertised for entertainment purposes, such as allowing people to swap their faces with celebrities or influencers.

    The Yahoo Boys’ live deepfake calls run in two different ways. In the first, shown above, the scammers use a setup of two phones and a face-swapping app. The scammer holds the phone they are calling their victim with—they’re mostly seen using Zoom, Maimon says, but it can work on any platform—and uses its rear camera to record the screen of a second phone. This second phone has its camera pointing at the scammer’s face and is running a face-swapping app. They often place the two phones on stands to ensure they don’t move and use ring lights to improve conditions for a real-time face-swap, the videos show.

    The second common tactic—shown below—uses a laptop instead of a phone. (WIRED has blurred real faces in both videos.) Here, the scammer uses a webcam to capture their face and software running on the laptop changes their appearance. Videos of the setup show scammers are able to see their own face alongside the altered deepfake, with just the manipulated image being displayed over the live video call.

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  • Online Conspiracies About the Baltimore Bridge Collapse Are Out of Control

    Online Conspiracies About the Baltimore Bridge Collapse Are Out of Control

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    Conspiracists and far-right extremists are blaming just about everything and everyone for Tuesday morning’s Baltimore bridge collapse.

    A non-exhaustive list of things that are getting blamed for the bridge collapse on Telegram and X include President Biden, Hamas, ISIS, P. Diddy, Nickelodeon, India, former president Barack Obama, Islam, aliens, Sri Lanka, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, Wokeness, Ukraine, foreign aid, the CIA, Jewish people, Israel, Russia, China, Iran, Covid vaccines, DEI, immigrants, Black people, and lockdowns.

    The Francis Scott Key truss bridge collapsed when the MV Dali cargo ship collided with one of the bridge supports. Six construction workers, who were filling potholes on the bridge’s roadway at the time, are presumed dead. The ship is owned by Singapore-based Grace Ocean Private Ltd., and the 22-person crew were all Indian. The ship was en route to Colombo, Sri Lanka, at the time of the accident.

    This did not stop people from “asking questions” about the incident, a frequent conspiracist response to major events. And though conspiracy theorists are having a hard time pinpointing exactly what conspiracy caused the collapse, the one thing they do agree on is that this incident is a “black swan event.”

    The term black swan event has been around for decades and is used to describe a major global event (typically in the financial markets) that can cause significant damage to a country’s economy. But in recent years, the term has been co-opted by the conspiracy-minded to explain an event triggered by the so-called deep state that would signal an imminent revolution, a third world war, or some other apocalyptic catastrophe.

    One of the first people to call the bridge collapse a black swan event was disgraced former US national security adviser Michael Flynn. “This is a BLACK SWAN event,” he wrote on X. “Black swans normally come out of the world of finance (not military) … There are harbor masters for every single one of these transit points in America that are in charge of assuring the safety of navigation … start there.” Flynn’s post has been viewed 7.2 million times.

    Misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, who has been charged in Romania with rape and human trafficking, also posted on X early on Tuesday morning, writing: “Nothing is safe. Black Swan Event imminent.” The post has been viewed almost 19 million times.

    The term black swan quickly began trending on X, and soon conspiracists, extremists, and right-wing lawmakers began coming up with explanations for what or who triggered this “black swan event.”

    One post claiming a link between the bridge collapse and the film Leave the World Behind has been viewed more than 1.2 million times. The post claimed that because the ship was headed to Sri Lanka, which has a lion on its flag, then the situation was linked to the ship that runs around at the beginning of the film which was called White Lion. The post also points out that the film was produced by Obama.

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  • There Are Dark Corners of the Internet. Then There’s 764

    There Are Dark Corners of the Internet. Then There’s 764

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    WIRED collaborated with Der Spiegel, Recorder, and The Washington Post on this reporting. Each wrote separate stories that the news organizations agreed to publish in tandem. This story contains descriptions of abuse, self-harm, murder, and suicide. Reader discretion is advised.

    It sounds like a cheap true-crime conspiracy: An international network of predators steeped in Satanism lure children from seemingly harmless online platforms like Discord, Minecraft, and Roblox and extort them to sexually exploit and grievously harm themselves. Some victims are even pushed to suicide.

    Except it’s true.

    A reporting consortium including Der Spiegel, Recorder, The Washington Post, and WIRED has unearthed a sprawling ecosystem that has targeted thousands of people and victimized dozens, if not hundreds, of children using some of the internet’s biggest platforms. Law enforcement believes the “com” network encompasses a swath of interlocking groups with thousands of users, including hundreds of hardcore members who victimize children through coordinated online campaigns of extortion, doxing, swatting, and harassment.

    This reporting consortium has obtained and analyzed more than 3 million messages from more than 50 chat groups on Discord and Telegram. The messages expose multiple com subgroups and thousands of users in nearly a dozen countries on three continents. Our investigation found ample evidence of predatory conduct and a persistent presence across apps including Telegram and Discord, while WIRED also found com activity on Instagram, SoundCloud, and Roblox. The platforms are aware of these groups, but they have yet to successfully eradicate them.

    The abuse perpetrated by members of com groups is extreme. They have coerced children into sexual abuse or self-harm, causing them to deeply lacerate their bodies to carve “cutsigns” of an abuser’s online alias into their skin. Victims have flushed their heads in toilets, attacked their siblings, killed their pets, and in some extreme instances, attempted or committed suicide. Court records from the United States and European nations reveal participants in this network have also been accused of robberies, in-person sexual abuse of minors, kidnapping, weapons violations, swatting, and murder.

    Some members of the network extort children for sexual pleasure, some for power and control. Some do it merely for the kick that comes from manipulation. Others sell the explicit content produced by extortion CSAM on the dark web.

    “Their main aim is to traumatize you,” says Anna, a young woman groomed and victimized by 764, one of the most notorious groups under the com umbrella. “They want to make you suffer. And for you to take your own life. They really are very sadistic people.”

    The nonprofit National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received hundreds of reports of minors extorted into hurting themselves in 2023, says NCMEC’s CyberTipline director Fallon McNulty, a sharp rise over previous years. The organization, which routes reports from social media companies and the public to law enforcement, still receives dozens each month, she says.

    “From 2022 into last year, especially, the scale of what’s coming through seems like it’s continuing to grow,” McNulty says, adding that in 2022 NCMEC only saw “a handful” of such extortion reports.

    These online groups, she says, are responsible for “some of the most egregious online enticement reports that we’re seeing in terms of what these children are being coerced to do.”

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  • YouTube, Discord, and ‘Lord of the Rings’ Led Police to a Teen Accused of a US Swatting Spree

    YouTube, Discord, and ‘Lord of the Rings’ Led Police to a Teen Accused of a US Swatting Spree

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    A California teenager prosecutors say is responsible for hundreds of swatting attacks around the United States was exposed after law enforcement pieced together a digital trail left on some of the internet’s largest platforms, according to court records released this week.

    Alan Winston Filion, a 17-year-old from Lancaster, California, faces four felony charges in Florida’s Seminole County related to swatting, or fake threats called into the police to provoke a forceful response, according to Florida state prosecutors. Police arrested Filion on January 18, and he was extradited to Seminole County this week.

    Filion’s arrest, first reported by WIRED on January 26, marks the culmination of a multi-agency manhunt for the person police claim is responsible for swatting attacks on high schools, historically black colleges and universities, mosques, and federal agents, and for threats to bomb the Pentagon, members of the United States Senate, and the US Supreme Court. Ultimately, a YouTube channel, Discord chats, and usernames related to The Lord of the Rings helped lead authorities to Filion’s doorstep.

    Florida prosecutors charged Filion with four felony counts, including three related to allegedly making false reports to law enforcement and one for unlawful use of a two-way radio for “facilitating or furthering an act of terrorism” that authorities say targeted people based on race, religion, or other protected classes. While prosecutors alleged that Filion “is responsible for hundreds of swatting and bomb threat incidents throughout the United States,” the charges Filion faces relate to a single May 12, 2023, swatting attack against the Masjid Al Hayy Mosque in Sanford, Florida.

    An attorney for Filion was not immediately available to respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

    More than a year before the swatting attack on the Florida mosque, agents with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed Filion’s father, William, at his home in Lancaster, California, according to court documents made public on Wednesday. The interview took place on April 21, 2022, the same day the owner of a Telegram channel linked to swatting activity posted, “SOMEONE JUST REPORTED ME TO THE FBI… LOL!”

    In October 2022, authorities investigating swatting incidents involving calls made to a school in Anacortes, Washington, came across a Telegram user associated with multiple swatting and doxing channels. The user, “Nazgul Swattings,” had claimed responsibility in one of these channels for the threats to the Washington schools, according to the same court documents.

    Over the following months, court records say, the FBI monitored channels linked to this user. One of those, a channel called Torswats (formerly Nazgul Swats), had shared recordings of nearly 20 hoax calls threatening locations around the country, including schools in Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

    As the FBI tracked Torswats’ public channels, Brad “Cafrozed” Dennis, a private investigator, was running his own parallel investigation on behalf of high-profile Twitch streamers who’d been swatted. In December, Dennis reached out to a user behind Torswats and asked to chat on a peer-to-peer chatting service called Tox under the guise of ordering a swat. According to records shared with WIRED, not mentioned in the arrest warrant, while interacting on Tox, Dennis used Wireshark to monitor his network traffic. In the process, he uncovered an IP address and the username “Paimon Arnum,” which was previously unknown to law enforcement.

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