Sydney Sweeney is enjoying an incredible run at the moment, starring in the award-winning The White Lotus, as well as Euphoria — HBO's second-most-watched show behind only Game of Thrones, the return of modern Shakespeare adaptation as romantic comedies with Anyone But You, and hard-hitting drama Reality.
To top it off, the Hollywood star has just hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time. But all that attention has (predictably) lead to some unintended consequences.
Following her appearance on SNL and a string of Box Office hits, the number of people searching for nudity of the Emmy Award-nominated actress skyrocketed on X, formerly Twitter. According to 404 Media, “Sydney Sweeney leak” became a trending topic on Twitter hours after the latest episode of Saturday Night Live aired in the United Statest.
Searching for her name will often return links to these “leak”, with many outranking more recent pictures and videos from her appearance at the Academy Awards ceremony.
And the scammers promising links to leaked sex tapes or nudity are trying to trick people into downloading malware.
Just one of the examples trying to lure X users into clicking into the revenue-generation Thaudray.com website that Malwarebytes secrutiy team warn about
X.COM
Many of these links send users to known-malware sites like thaudray.com and waufooke.com.
These websites are part of an advertising service that can generate revenue for website owners or hackers. There are a number of malicious apps designed only to redirect you to these ads in order to artificially inflate impression numbers and generate revenue.
Security experts at Malwarebytes warn that anyone who is redirected to Thaudray.com site, most likely has “an unwanted browser extension or a malicious program installed on their device”.
The team cautions: “Your browser may be redirected to Waufooke.com due to malware infection on your device, push notifications from malicious sites, or by being redirected from another website you visited. Less reputable sites may display malicious ads that redirect your browser to Waufooke.com in order to generate advertising revenue.
“If this happens, you should close the page and consider installing an ad blocker, like AdGuard, to block these types of ads. If you continue to see pop-ups from Waufooke.com, it is possible that your computer is infected with a malicious program, and you should scan your device for adware and remove it.”
Needless to say, avoid all of the links being shared across X under the pretence of showing nudity. If you’re not already running an anti-virus, it might be a good time to install one.
This is the latest in a string of scams that have gained traction on X. In January, AI-generated nude pictures of Taylor Swift started to trend in multiple countries before moderators managed to get a handle on things and shut it down.
More recently, podcasting influencer Bobbi Althoff went viral for the same reason. And now, it’s Immaculate star Sydney Sweeney.
Twitter was never brilliant at preventing spam campaigns like this, but the moderation seems to have taken a turn for the worse under Elon Musk’s stewardship.
That might just be a result of numbers — after all, the spacefaring billionaire fired over 80% of staff at the company when he completed his $44 billion acquisition. Of those, staff overseeing content moderation were fired and Musk also dissolved the Trust and Safety Council, the independent advisory group of some 100 independent civil, human rights, and other organizations that was put together in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, suicide, and other problematic content found on the platform.
There could be another explanation for the rise in nudity and leak-based malware and spam campaigns ... there are more men on the platform than ever before.
Looking through the list of celebrities at the forefront of these malicious campaigns, it’s not difficult to work out who the hackers are targeting. According to data compiled by Measure Protocol for NPR, the average time spent on X by men aged 18 to 24 has risen dramatically since Elon Musk took over the social media company — increasing from roughly 90 minutes a week in 2022 to 157 minutes in 2024.
Sydney Sweeney at the premiere of Sony Pictures' Madame Web, which sees the character from the Spider-Man franchise get her own origin story
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Twitter used to make its money from advertising, something that has plummeted under his stewardship. X saw ad revenue plunge by half compared with previous years, bringing in just $2.5 billion in 2023.
In the hunt to find alternative revenue models, Musk has launched a number of paid subscription tiers and successfully lured some of the biggest YouTube stars, like Mr. Beast, to post full-length videos on the platform under a new revenue-sharing model.
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The ongoing trend of female celebrities trending because scam artists have created illegal AI-generated nudes or are capitalising on interest in them to peddle malware won’t be helping to see more advertisers, paid subscribers, or content creators return to the fold though.
