What just happened? One of YouTube’s most prominent technology channels, Linus Tech Tips, recently fell victim to hacking. Hackers used the channel to broadcast pre-recorded ‘live-streaming’ crypto-scam videos featuring former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. As a result, the channel has been shut down due to violations of YouTube’s community guidelines. Unfortunately, it seems that Linus’ other channels are also being exploited.
Linus Sebastian, the founder of Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel, has been producing content on the platform since 2008 and has an impressive subscriber count of 15.8 million. The channel is part of the Linus Media Group, along with other channels such as TechLinked, but remains the most popular. However, Unfortunately for everyone involved, it has become the latest high-profile channel to be hacked.
The hackers responsible for the Linus TechTips Hacked renamed the channel to LinusTechTipsTemp and added a temporary handle (@temporaryhandle). In addition, they uploaded two videos of old live streams featuring Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk, which were initially part of Ark Invest’s The B Word conference in June of last year. Overlays linking to cryptocurrency scams were also added. This tactic has been used before, including in the hack on the British Army YouTube channel last year.
After violating YouTube’s policies, the Linus Tech Tips channel has been suspended, but the hackers have now moved on to other Linus Media Group accounts. The Tesla channel, now renamed TechLinked, is currently displaying the same live stream featuring Musk. The hackers have added approximately 15 (at last count) official Tesla videos to make the channel appear more legitimate, but YouTube is expected to take action and block the account soon.
While the details of how the hackers took over the Linus TechTips Hacked channel remain unclear, neither Linus nor anyone else at the company has yet issued an official statement. (Note: statement has been updated).
Although all content from the affected channels has been removed, Linus had previously created videos showcasing the high-end hardware used for storing terabytes of backups created by the company over the years. It is hoped that the affected channels will be restored in due course. Nevertheless, the team is likely to be both embarrassed and angry that such an incident occurred.
Linus addresses the account hacking via video.
Thankfully, the LTT channel seems to be back in operation almost 24 hours after the breach.
While it is good to see LTT restored to its former state, there is a need for changes on Google’s end in the future to prevent such account compromises. If it could happen to LTT through session tokens, it could happen to anyone.
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