If you follow the tech world, you almost certainly follow or know of the Linus Tech Tips channel. These Youtube giants have a number of followers in the millions, across various channels. This has made them a succulent target for a crypto scam that he has hacked his account to broadcast a fake stream of Tesla Elon Musk
The scam is not new. It has affected small channels such as that of a Madrid wrestling promotion, or one specialized in reviewing the nostalgia of the early 2000s. You would think that with Linus Tech Tips being such a large channel, they would be wary of these hacks, but the hack itself is very complicated.
This is how they could have hacked the Linus Tech Tips channel
The Youtube channel specialized in computer science ThioJoe, explained a month ago how this event could have occurred. This is a hack that doesn't even need to break two-factor authentication. The process would be a cookie theft, using malware that would have entered one of the computers on Linus's business network. Once inside, he would have detected cookies from his channels. It is a possibility but it is not certain that this is the way that has been done to get the hack to Linus Tech Tips.
By having cookies, they are directly logged into the account and can hide the content of the channel, change their identity. They can also change two-factor authentication to limit the original creator's ability to retrieve their channel. Normally, Google should ask for confirmation, but it has been seen that it does not do so every time, when it should. The malware would have used several layers of security to hide itself, and have a huge weight to avoid being uploaded to sites like VirusTotal, and slow down antivirus.
Very surely, Linus Tech Tips will recover his channel. For now, it is broadcasting a fake Elon Musk stream with a chat that encourages you to donate cryptocurrency to receive double. Why cryptocurrencies? Musk fans are also big cryptocurrency advocates and investors. The fact of how does a blockchain like bitcoin work o Ethereum, in order to reverse a single transaction, needs to be approved by the vast majority of users. But many users of the blockchain could decide not to follow it and create a deviation. This is highly impractical for miners and users, so it is most convenient that the hackers running the scam do not have to return the cryptocurrencies.