In Brief:
- Hackers attacked around 30 crypto youtubers via hijacking their accounts.
- YouTubers noticed an unauthorized video uploaded to their channels around the same time.
- The video titled as ‘one world cryptocurrency’ uploaded to promote a fake crypto giveaway.
Hackers targeted a number of popular crypto YouTubers via hijacking their accounts. Youtubers noticed a fraudulent video promoting a fake crypto giveaway and removed it from their channels within minutes of them being posted.
The affected accounts include BitBoy Crypto, Box Mining, Ivan and Tech, The moon, Altcoin Buzz, and Floyd Mayweather among others.
According to Michael Gu, his YouTube Boxmining channel posted a video without his permission. Fortunately, he noticed the fraudulent activity within two minutes of the video being posted and removed it immediately.
At that time, the video already accumulated several views and comments from his community. The scam video was about “one world cryptocurrency”, he also mentioned, this is likely a hijacking attack on YouTube and there are around 30 Youtubers affected.
According to one Reddit user, the scam video had an address in a video and description to send BNB/USDT/ETH/USDC to receive crypto called OWCY. One of the users also suggested it appears the hackers were able to gain access to the accounts using a SIM swap scam which eliminates the two-way authentication.
Michael also checked the latest activities from his account and found recent login from the Philippines. The scam videos from other attacked YouTubers were posted around the same time. YouTube responded to the complaints saying the YouTube team will reach out to gather more info to restore accounts.
Another crypto Youtuber came forward saying that his channel has been banned during the middle of a Livestream, which points that YouTube was probably aware of the activity. Meanwhile, youtube has deleted and later restored its channel for security concerns.
Shash Gupta, founder, and CEO of the Altcoin Buzz YouTube Channel also witnessed something amiss at around 1 AM Singapore time on Sunday night when an unauthorized video was uploaded to his channel.
This is not the first time that famous personalities’ accounts got hacked in order to promote crypto scams. Recently, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter account was attacked to attempt a Bitcoin Giveaway. With increasing participation in the crypto sector, countries are adopting stringent rules to keep an eye on illegal activities in the industry. This month, the UK government announced its plan on tightening the rules on misleading crypto advertisements to improve consumer protection.
