Popular 'Deepfakes' Forum Is Mining For Cryptocurrency

Deepfakes, an increasingly popular form of media that masks the face of a celebrity or other party over the face of a person in a video, continue to be pushed off internet platforms, a new website has cropped up as a popular home for the content--and is using its newfound popularity to mine for cryptocurrency. The forum, created less than one week ago, has drawn a considerable amount of traffic and has implemented cryptomining code that uses the computing power of visitors' machines to mine for cryptocurrency, according to security researchers at Malwarebytes. The forum, which boasts more than 2,300 registered users in just a few days since it began operating, is used to post so-called "deepfakes"--images and videos that map one person's face over the top of another, making it possible to place someone in a video and have their face show the same expressions as the person they are mapped over. Deepfakes can be used for any number of purposes but have gained popularity for creating pornographic content. Deepfakes users place the faces of celebrities and other people atop the faces of porn actors in explicit scenes.