- The pirates are increasingly targeting influencers of social media and content creators
- Their accounts have enormous scope, which crooks can use to deploy malware
- Adepts are often trained in cryptographic scams and an identity theft
Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting influencers of social media and other popular individuals in order to infect their subscribers by malicious software, to attract them to cryptographic scams or to steal their sensitive information.
A new Bitdefender report warned that the trend was widespread in 2024 and also continued in 2025.
Threat actors would first address influencers of social media and content creators in different ways, notes the report – they could offer false sponsorship agreements, false video software on AI or by simple phishing. If the victim falls into the trick and download the malware, the attackers have maintenance of the connection identification information for the different platforms they use (YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok and others).
Millions of people at risk
The platforms are then used to target subscribers in different ways.
For example, Bitdefender says that there were more than 9,000 malicious live broadcasters on YouTube alone.
“These flows often seem legitimate at first glance, but they are controlled by pirates who have renamed compromise canals,” they said. Return often to massage major names such as Donald Trump, Elon Musk (a favorite among crypto crooks), Michael Saylor or Brad Garlinghouse.
Researchers think that is a major problem, with millions of people at risk. In fact, a compromised YouTube account was followed by more than 28 million people, and another compromise account had more than 12 billion views in total.
“The amazing number highlights the world scope to which threat actors can access,” added Bitdefender. “If cybercriminals only convert 1% of these points of view, this is equivalent to 124 million potential victims exposed to scams, malware or data theft.”
During these live flows, crooks would promote malicious areas, which they can use to steal identification information, cryptocurrency participations of people or personal information.
Content creators are advised to strengthen security, while subscribers should be skeptical about everything they see online, including information from their favorite influencer.
