This Wednesday, September 7, the tech world was in turmoil, like every year, for the big presentation event for new Apple products, iPhone 14 in mind. The brand retaining a magnetism that far exceeds that of other manufacturers, except perhaps Google with its I/O, millions of people connected at the scheduled time to follow the conference in its entirety. The opportunity was therefore too good for a few smart guys, who tried to fool Internet users with the live broadcast of a fake conference by Tim Cook dedicated to cryptocurrencies.
A fake stream dubbed “Apple Event Live. Apple CEO Tim Cook: Apple & Metaverse in 2022” was spotted by a reporter from The Verge, who was surprised to see tens of thousands of people connected. This “live” featured an old interview that CNN conducted with Tim Cook in 2018. The broadcaster had added the Bitcoin and Ethereum logos, masked the CNN Money logo with other text (“Apple Crypto Event 2022”), and added a banner “Breaking News” in bold.
It was by accessing the channel’s page that the scam took shape, which was filled with strange messages and links to an obscure cryptocurrency site. Obviously, YouTube removed the harmful feed after the publication of the article of our American colleagues for violation of the conditions of service of the site. Other fake video streams of the same ilk were spotted by Internet users during the Apple conference, but it is impossible to estimate the number of people actually duped by such processes.