YouTube

YouTube channel hacks for crypto scams keep happening, takes down Linus Tech Tips

Ben Schoon | Mar 23 2023 - 6:54 am PT

Over the past few years, it’s become very common for YouTube channels small and large to fall victim to hacks that end up taking over the channel with crypto scams. Today, that practice has hit one of YouTube’s most popular channels, Linus Tech Tips.

With an audience of over 15 million subscribers and several other channels in the Linus Media Group, Linus Tech Tips is one of the biggest channels on YouTube, especially in the tech space.

Overnight, the channel suddenly changed, with subscribers noticing that some older re-uploaded videos or videos that were meant to be private were appearing in their feeds, before the channel was renamed “Tesla” and started showing livestreams regarding Elon Musk and Bitcoin. These videos often bait users into sending crypto or revealing their wallet details. By this morning, the channel had been disabled entirely, taking down both the crypto scams but also the channel’s content.

The hack also hit two of Linus Media Group’s other channels, Techquickie (a channel focused on short explanations) and TechLinked (a news channel).

This isn’t the only major breach in recent memory. Music artists including Lil Nas X, Drake, and Taylor Swift have seen similar breaches. In 2021, Google, speaking to Wired, noted that breaches of this sort were coming from phishing attacks. It’s unclear what happened in the case of Linus Tech Tips, but the damage is done, and with how widespread these attacks have become, it’s surprising that YouTube isn’t providing more tools to protect creators. The Verge suggests a “guardian system” that requires approval from a second account to make major changes to a channel such as renaming or deleting videos.