Manta founder nearly falls victim to Lazarus led deepfake Zoom scam

It appears Manta Network co-founder Kenny Li just dodged a Zoom call or a zero-day trap. Either way, it was more than a typical scammer with bad grammar and worse audio; it was a next-level phishing attempt that could’ve taken control of his device.

The attacker showed up on Zoom using live recordings of someone Kenny knew, and the camera was on with a familiar face smiling… but totally silent. Despite the cyber attack on the founder, Manta Network (MANTA) price rode an upward rally of around 5% in the last 24 hours.

Kenny Li dodges Zoom hack trap

Kenny Li in an X post stated that he got targeted by Lazarus after a known contact reached out to him for a chat over Telegram. The conversation turned into a scheduled Zoom call where the attacker asked him for camera access. 

In the call, there were team members who had their cameras on, and Manta founder could see their faces. He mentioned that “Everything looked very real. But I couldn’t hear them.” Then came the “Zoom update required” prompt, with a script file download but Kenny dipped it instantly.

The Manta founder tried verifying via Telegram and asked the attacker to call him. The scammer ghosted, deleted the chat, and vanished, but not before Kenny snagged screenshots of the whole thing. He is pretty sure the video wasn’t AI-generated, as it looked like real footage lifted from earlier Zoom calls.

The real person’s accounts had been reportedly compromised by none other than North Korea’s infamous Lazarus Group.

Be extremely careful. If you don’t pay attention you would go through this whole process and never even noticed.

I suspect this might be at the center of some of the recent DeFi hacks. https://t.co/LS1dhtA9r1 pic.twitter.com/V0tq5qaNRB

— 🤓Kenny.manta (@superanonymousk) April 18, 2025

He asked users to be extremely careful and stated, “If you don’t pay attention, you would go through this whole process and never even notice.” Kenny suspects that this might be at the center of some of the recent DeFi hacks. 

Manta gains 5% after Zoom hack drama

Lazarus Group has pulled off a few of the biggest disappearing acts in crypto history. Recently, they jacked $1.5 billion in digital assets from the Bybit crypto exchange by hijacking a supplier’s wallet address. ByBit thought they were transferring 401,000 ETH to themselves, but in fact, they were sending it straight into the hacker’s account. ByBit says it’s been a digital cat-and-mouse chase ever since, and 20% of the funds have already slipped away, never to be recovered

Manta is on the rise despite the fresh attack on the founder. Manta price jumped by 5% trying to recover from the longer period loss. It has seen a decline of 33% over the past 30 days. Manta is trading at an average price of $0.181 as of press time. Its 24-hour trading volume has dropped by 40% to stand at $7.78 million.

The global digital assets market remained marginally up over the last day with a cumulative cap of $2.67 trillion. 24-hour trading volume dropped by 20% to $60.3 billion. Bitcoin remains stable, trading at $84,496.

Cryptopolitan Academy: Coming Soon - A New Way to Earn Passive Income with DeFi in 2025. Learn More