No, Elon Musk has nothing to do with “Quantum AI”, it’s a scam!

© Presse-citron

Not all scams are easy to identify, especially when they ride on new technologies and the aura of Elon Musk… which itself sometimes promotes things (notably cryptocurrencies) which can serve as an argument for cybercriminals.

To make matters worse, with this scam – discovery on Instagram – Google can mislead victims, since the first results seem to confirm the statements of the malicious page we are about to tell you about. It all started with an advertisement discovered between two scrolls.

Elon Musk has not associated himself with any “investment service” to our knowledge

Advertising advances in English “Are you a European citizen? Supplement your income with Quantum AI”. Out of curiosity we click. We then come across a page (attached to a domain name which has nothing to do with the brand it is supposed to be about), which does not hesitate to affirm that the service, presented as a service “investment”, is supported by Elon Musk himself.

© Lemon squeezer

Obviously we are wary, and the first instinct is to type “Quantum AI Elon Musk” in Google. However, the first four results (three of which are linked to keyword purchases) support the scam with strong mentions of the type 'Top Rated Website by Investment Trends 2023'.

< p>There is even a disreputable test of the service (probably written by its instigators). By sharing the landing page of the scam in question with a colleague on Slack we realize that the domain used by the hackers has already been used for completely different scams.

Last element: Quantum AI does have a page on Instagram, which only contains dubious posts featuring Elon Musk and the prospect of making huge money. Looking a little further, we realize that the Quantum AI brand does not come from nowhere.

The Quantum AI Lab exists, for example – but it is a joint venture of NASA, a university space research association and Google, whose legitimate aim this time is to develop computer systems quantum. All this being very far from an investment service and Elon Musk.

If you inadvertently come across the scam we therefore recommend that you do not click, and Above all, report the promotional post as soon as you come across it. So that the scam cannot claim more victims… Online scams tend to become increasingly difficult to detect.

Luckily some antivirus suites like Bitdefender can do the job for you. These are based on a database updated at regular intervals by security researchers. As soon as a malicious domain is detected, the antivirus blocks it… so that the user cannot view this type of malicious page and fall into the trap of cybercriminals.