An increasing number of users are falling victim to an old trading bot scam that’s been rebranded to take advantage of the hype around artificial intelligence, blockchain security firm SlowMist said.
In an Oct. 13 Medium post, SlowMist said cybercriminals have adapted to trending topics by using OpenAI’s ChatGPT in the names of their scam bots to take advantage of the current AI hype.
Fake bots that used to be marketed as a “Uniswap Arbitrage MEV Bot” have been rebranded as a “ChatGPT Arbitrage MEV Bot.”
“By slapping the label ChatGPT onto their scams, they manage to grab attention and appear more credible,” the firm wrote.
“The scammers claim that they used ChatGPT to generate the bot’s code, which helps to ease users’ doubts about any malicious intent in the code,” it added.
SlowMist says cybercriminals have rebranded an old scam as a ChatGPT Arbitrage MEV Bot to take advantage of the hype around AI. Source: SlowMist
SlowMist said scammers lure users with the promise of a trading bot that will help net big profits by monitoring new tokens and significant price fluctuations on Ethereum.
Victims are encouraged to create a MetaMask wallet and click on a fraudulent link on the open-source platform Remix. Once the code is copied and the bot is deployed, users are told to fund the smart contract to “activate” it.
“The more ETH they deposit, the greater their supposed profits. But when the user clicks ‘start,’ the deposited ETH vanishes — funneled straight into the scammer’s wallet via a backdoor coded into the smart contract,” SlowMist wrote.
“The outgoing funds are either transferred directly to exchanges or moved to temporary storage addresses,” the firm said.
Victims are encouraged to create a MetaMask wallet and click on a fraudulent Remix link as part of the scam. Source: SlowMist
SlowMist says they have found three scammer addresses using these techniques to rip off unsuspecting users.
Since August, one had stolen 30 Ether (ETH), worth more than $78,000, from over 100 victims. Two others had stolen 20 Ether, worth over $52,000, from 93 victims
SlowMist said the scammers employ a “wide-net approach” — stealing small amounts from many victims — who often don’t bother trying to retrieve the funds because the effort required to do so is greater than the amount stolen.
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“Because the individual losses are relatively minor, many victims do not have the time or resources to get justice,” SlowMist wrote.
“This allows the scammers to continue their operations, often rebranding the scam under a new name,” it said
According to the blockchain security firm, the internet, particularly YouTube, has many videos promoting this type of scam.
It warned that red flags indicating the video is promoting a scam may include the video and audio being out of sync, or showing recycled footage from another source.
An unusually high number of comments with praise and thanks at the top of thread, with later updates calling out the scheme as a scam, can also be red flags, it said.