Through a fake Facebook page posing as the generative AI tool Midjourney, hackers promoted malware to 1.2 million people for almost a year.
The many services using theartificial intelligence are sometimes available for free, but most require payment. Either to use them or to benefit from an improved version. A report from Bitdefender, famous for its eponymous anti-virus, explains precisely how hackers use the growing reputation of AI tools and the social networks For distribute malware to as many people as possible by dangling them with free trials.
The principle is always the same : take control of a Facebook pagepreferably with a significant number of subscribers, before transforming it into what looks like the official account of an AI service. ChatGPT,Sora, Gemini… Almost everyone is entitled to it. Among these fake pages, that of Midjourney, which allows you to create images from texts, is a special case.
Fake Midjourney Facebook page advertises malware and fools 1.2 million people
Research shows thata fake page called Mid-Journey AI was created on Facebook from an existing profile hacked in June 2023. Hackers publish images generated with AI and posts to advertise a so-called version to install on one’s computer. Sometimes the posts talk about the possibility of creating NFTs with one’s creations and then selling them.
In all cases, a link is provided. Clicking on it lands on one of the multiple fake web pages imitating the Midjourney site. There is another link to retrieve the tool, except that it triggers the downloading malware.
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It is Rilide V4a malicious program taking the form of a Google Translate extension for browser. In reality, she steals a lot of data like your historical and more generally the information recorded: Passwords, banking information…The fake Facebook page is remained online until March 8, 2024 and counted 1.2 million subscribers.
The posts were sponsored for men between 25 and 55 years old In several European countries including France. It’s hard to say how many actually downloaded the malware. What is certain is that the hackers have already recreated a new page pretending to be Midjourney. On March 26, it already counted 637,000 subscribers.