In order to steal their assets once they attempt to conduct a transaction, the scam tempts victims to download phony front-running bot software.
According to a recent report from blockchain security company CertiK, the number of questionable content on YouTube will increase six-fold in 2022 as a result of the huge growth of front-running scam bots.
The company CertiK examines how a surge of front-running bot frauds are promising free returns as high as 10X a day but eventually steal people's money in their research from December 1.
Notably, according to CertiK's study, 168 videos on YouTube citing "front running bot" in 2022 were scams, up 500% from the 28 videos in 2021:
“Free code and enormous returns are recurrent themes throughout all of these videos.
Successful runners would sell their code for a high price on underground forums instead than giving it away for free on social media.”
Typically, victims are led to bogus bot software that they download, which is intended to steal their assets whenever they attempt to start a front-running transaction.
Front-running bots are a concern even when they are not frauds since in some situations they might give the deployer a clear edge over other cryptocurrency dealers.
The bots typically search for unconfirmed transactions on blockchains and then pay more gas to move ahead of such transactions, "basically beating it to the punch and collecting all the profit on offer" from a trade.
According to the research, movies with suspicious titles like "$15,000 Front Running Crypto Bot Leak! - 50X HUGE RETURNS!" were found.
and "Uniswap Front Running Bot 2022 - EASY TUTORIAL (Huge earnings)," both of which are scams in which con artists pretend to be tutorials on how to download and use the bots.
Naturally, the comment areas of the videos are flooded with innumerable automated remarks applauding the content, drowning out genuine comments that raise red flags.
The Cointelegraph reported on November 22 that deepfake movies featuring Sam Bankman-likeness Fried's were spreading online and intended to deceive people affected by FTX's bankruptcy. Scam reports have been plentiful lately.
On November 17, CertiK published a different report explaining how cryptocurrency scammers have been exploiting identities purchased on the black market to place their names and faces on phony enterprises.
The identities of these so-called "Professional KYC actors" may be acquired for as little as $8.00, according to CertiK.
On December 1, users in the r/Metallica community were also alerting Reddit users to bogus Metallica live broadcasts that linked to cryptocurrency giveaway scams and featured the entire band.
Some users even asserted that the videos had been recommended to them in the top recommendations on YouTube.
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