Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel hacked to promote Elon Musk crypto scam videos
❘ Published: 2023-03-23T11:36:10
❘ Updated: 2023-03-23T11:51:10
The Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel has been hacked, and is now under a different handle, promoting crypto scam videos featuring Elon Musk.
YouTube has had an ongoing problem with account breaches, and now it appears that one of the biggest channels on the platform has been hacked. LinusTechTips, known for its accessible PC hardware content, has been the latest victim of these attacks.
The channel has been renamed to “LinusTechTipsTemp” under the handle “@temporaryhandle”. The channel has also deleted most of its videos, although these are gradually being restored.
The channel that was breached streamed two videos of Elon Musk talking about cryptocurrency with Twitter’s original founder. One is called “OpenAI ChatGPT-4: The Game-Changing AI Technology”, while the other is called “LinusTechTips & Elon Musk Special Crypto Giveaway”. The latter stream has been taken down after around 20 minutes of transmission. The first stream went down after about 35 minutes of transmission.
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However, both of them have now been brought back to life in what appears to be a battle between the nefarious actors and YouTube itself.
However, both live streams appear to be identical, showing the exact same video. Although in the chat there is a link to a presumably malicious “Crypto Giveaway”. This appears to be a phishing attempt to get cryptocurrency wallet details from unsuspecting viewers.
Will LinusTechTips get their videos back?
While bad actors may have already scrubbed most LinusTechTips videos, previous cases of account breaches with video deletion have resulted in accounts being reinstated after account owner recovery. It looks like the previously deleted videos are now being restored by YouTube itself.
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The re-uploaded videos also include apparently previously unlisted videos, with different titles. Some videos even explicitly say “Do not upload” or “Do not use” in the titles.
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This has been a long-standing problem for YouTube, as an additional tech channel, Eteknix, was hacked a few weeks ago, but apparently got their accounts back with all videos restored as well.
It’s unclear how the hackers managed to get into Linus Tech Tips’ account, although it does highlight the importance of security on all accounts where possible. YouTube has not yet responded that the 15 million subscriber account was breached at the time of writing.
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Twitch has also had issues with scam crypto streams pretending to be Elon Musk, and sometimes taking over major streamers.
TechQuickie also compromised
It appears that the LTT affiliate channel, TechQuickie, has also been compromised, posting the same video under a different name. However, it looks like other Linus Media Group-owned channels have yet to be affected if the hackers have access to them.
