In April 2024, Telegram was spreading a video with the Deutsche Welle logo, which reports to detain Ukrainian hackers, stealing data from open Wi-Fi networks. We checked the authenticity of this video.
On April 22, the following content appeared in Telegram: “The Berlin police warns about the danger of using Wi-Fi open networks in public places due to Ukrainian scammers.” The posts attached a video with the logo of the German public media company Deutsche Welle, which reported the detention of 80 Ukrainian hackers from the 31337 Nice group in Berlin. Fraudsters allegedly created publicly available Wi-Fi networks, through which they gained access to user phone numbers and their personal data, including cryptocurrencies. This video was published by such Telegram channels as "Sheikh Tamir"(291 000 on the day of writing this analysis), Rogandar News (122,000), "Antifses"(65,000) and others. Some Russian Media and users "VKontakte".
The format and manner of presenting information in the video about Ukrainian hackers resembles DW videos, which are published on its official pages in Facebook, X, Instagram And YouTube. Typically, a German broadcasting corporation posts a video on several platforms at the same time, as you can see on the example of a plot published on May 1, 2024 in Facebook, X And Instagramas well as on site publications. However, “verified” did not find a story about the detention of Ukrainian hackers on any platform where DW is present. Moreover, not a single German or other large European media wrote about this.
If you compare the video from Telegram with DW news rollers, you can notice several inconsistencies. Firstly, in a fake video, another font is used, albeit very similar to the corporate party.
Secondly, in a fake video there are errors in formatting and spelling, such as double gaps, strange alignment of lines and writing Wi-Fi words with lowercase letters (in these DW publications, this term written from capital letters).
Thirdly, the so-called construction (the final screensaver with the author of the author of the content), which indicated 2023, is used in the fake video, although the video is presented in publications as fresh, that is, it was supposed to be released in April 2024.
“Verified” also failed to find a single mention of the hacker group 31337 Nice on the Internet. Symbols 31337 are often found in the subculture of hackers and gamers. Since the 1980s, slang, which was called LEETSPEAK, it was customary to replace the letters with externally similar numbers and symbols in order to circumvent filters for blocking prohibited words (for example, Hacker was written as H4x0r). So, 31337 Read Like Eleet (distorted Elite - “elite”), and hackers and programmers often use this word in the user's name. For example, in 2017, a hacker group with a similar name 31337 launched the #leaktheanalyst campaign and Has hacked Computer of an employee of the American company Mandiant, and five years later Published The threats of new hacks.
FACECHERS from the Ukrainian project "Ґvara Medіa»Checked website Berlin police, where police reports are published daily about incidents, including cases of cyber abuse. In the archive for April there are no references to exposing Ukrainian hackers or theft of personal data of users through Wi-Fi networks. “Ґvara Medіa” also turned to DW for a comment, and the representative of the media company replied that the video had nothing to do with the publication.
Judging by the TGSTAT service, the fake video was published by the Telegram channel "Sheikh Tamir»April 22 at 10:04 pm Moscow time. This is not the first time when the video, the author of which, when a story about the invented news, used the design of an authoritative foreign media, appears in the pro -Kremlin segment of Telegram. Previously, “verified” has already published the analysis of fake videos, allegedly released Al jazeera, Euronews, BBC, Reuters, Fox News and, as in this case, Deutsche Welle. Such videos are usually a series of pictures and clips taken from open sources, against which text credits communicate fake news.
Thus, a video that was dispersed in Telegram about the detention of Ukrainian hackers in Berlin is a fake. In any of any authoritative foreign media there are neither references to this event, nor information about the hacker group 31337 Nice. Neither Deutsche Welle, nor the German police, which are referred by the authors of the video, did not release the corresponding materials.
Photo on the cover: Sora shimazaki / PEXELS
Read on the topic:
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please inform us of this, highlighting the text with an error and by pressing Ctrl+Enter.
