Tech YouTuber 'Linus Tech Tips' has Account Compromised
Saturday, 25 March 2023
The most-watched YouTube channel covering technology, Linus Tech Tips, was hacked this morning. Instead of the usual tech videos, the channel's 15.3 million subscribers were greeted with videos promoting crypto scams. Other channels in the Linus Media Group such as Techquickie and TechLinked were also breached, being repurposed to pretend to be associated with Tesla.
Linus Media Group CEO Linus Sebastian stated that he was working with Google, "getting to the bottom of the attack vector with the (hopeful) goal of hardening their security around YouTube accounts and preventing this sort of thing from happening to anyone in the future."
The breach of Linus Tech Tips is just the latest in a series of recent breaches that have been manufactured to drive viewers towards crypto scams. July of 2022 saw the British Army's YouTube and Twitter accounts hacked to promote crypto scams, and the Vevo channels for several popular musicians such as Lil Nas X, Drake and Taylor Swift were all affected by similar breaches.
Further investigation into the cause of the breach revealed it originated through a fake sponsor reaching out to the creator. YouTubers are promised lucrative sponsorship deals, then convinced to download a file with details regarding the sponsorship. However, this file contains specially-crafted malware specifically designed to hijack YouTube accounts.
