YouTube Terminates Linus Tech Tips Channel Following Crypto Scammer Hack

Popular tech YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips was hacked, resurfacing with a different name promoting crypto scam videos featuring Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk. The hack is one of many such incidents of account breaches on the video streaming platform with cryptocurrency scammers being the regular offender.

Account Terminated in Damage Control Move

However, an hour after the hack was reported, YouTube seems to have terminated the account, presumably to stop the crypto scammers from luring in unsuspecting viewers. Meanwhile, it is believed that YouTube is working in the background to restore channel ownership back to Linus Sebastian.

The channel had 15.3 million subscribers who were treated to two live streams with phishing links. Most interestingly, as the existing channel videos were being deleted by the scammers, and ostensibly restored by YouTube, some erstwhile private videos with titles prefaced by "DO NOT UPLOAD" were also made public in the tug of war between YouTube and the hackers.

The most recent hacks targeted the main LinusTechTips channel, changing the name to "@temporaryhandle". The channel has also deleted most of the videos, although they were gradually getting restored.

Two Other Linus Media Group Channels Hacked

Additionally, other Linus Media Group accounts (presumably tied to the same email ID) including Techquickie and TechLinked were also hacked, with new names focused around Tesla given to them.

The hacked tech channel streamed two deepfake videos featuring Elon Musk talking about cryptocurrency with Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey. One of them is named "OpenAI ChatGPT-4: The Game Changing AI Technology", whereas the other is called "LinusTechTips & Elon Musk Special Crypto Giveaway." This one was taken down 20 minutes into streaming, while the first stream went down after 35 minutes of broadcast.

Hackers Use Popular Channels as Phishing Baits

That said, both streams again went live, in what seems to be an ongoing tug-of-war between the hackers and YouTube. Both live streams appear to be identical, and included a link to a malicious "Crypto Giveaway" website in the chat. The link is quite obviously a phishing attempt to acquire cryptocurrency wallets from unsuspecting viewers.

The hack is part of a series of similar attacks over the past year where crypto scammers breached accounts to promote livestreams pushing viewers to shady crypto sites through links or QR codes.

Previously, the YouTube channel of the British Army was hacked to promote crypto scams, after a fake Apple crypto scam surfaced a few months before. Channels of popular artists - Lil Nas X, Drake, Taylor Swift were also breached with similar results.

How Did LTT Get Hacked?

It is not immediately clear how the LTT channel got hacked, whether it's a case of compromised password or two-factor authentication. There is also no clarity on what YouTube is doing to protect high value accounts from being breached by bad actors.

One YouTuber named Sully claimed the breaches are done through fake sponsors reaching out to YouTubers, who are then convinced to download a file which contains malware to steal cookies. They can then remotely control PCs and gain access to the YouTube accounts.