Hi just a quick uh news update and serious warning for uh, any content creator usually. but in particular um YouTube content creators? uh, unfortunately. Linus Tech Tips: um the huge Channel with 15 million subscribers I Know there's huge overlaps between our audience. They have been hit with a hack and all of their channels.

They've got multiple channels. They've all been uh, shut down. They were hit with a crypto scam um hack which has been happening to YouTube channels everywhere. It's just like it's it's practically a plague.

But yeah, all of their channels have been shut down. This is a safety mechanism. Uh YouTube have done this so that they can. you know, restore, hopefully restore all their videos and content and channel back.

um to them. So I'm sure you know they're working uh, furiously to try and get it back. but yeah it is. It is Gonski.

It is currently gone. their uh website with uh, their float plane thing is still available because that runs on their own servers. This isn't uh part of the hack so you know here it is in giz uh Moto it just happened like in the last like eight hours or something and uh, lioness has actually uh responded um he posted this on uh float plane which I don't have access to so I can't see it directly but this is on their forums regarding the YouTube channel hack. We are on top of it with you Google's team now and everything should be locked down and we are 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. Security: Well, this has been happening for what years now. So uh, yeah, but Linus Tech Tips: 15 million Subs Huge profile uh channel is it the highest profile Channel that's been hacked and shut down I Don't know in in the IT world I Don't think there's anyone bigger than Linus Tech Tips: really? But I don't know how many like 50 100 employees or something that they've got. It's absolutely enormous business that they've got.

It's not just Linus and a couple of nerds in their house. whatever they uh, were you know quite a few years back. it's absolutely enormous. Enterprise Now and here's where the attack: Vector Like they're working on the attack Vector I Can pretty much pretty confident I know where the attack Vector is now all of us YouTubers Literally daily, we get emails from sponsors from companies who want to sponsor our Channel and most of them are legitimate will be legitimate.

but there will be a whole bunch and I'm sure lines gets probably dozens of these per day. I I Get probably you know, at least one a day. like one sponsorship deal a day and maybe one a week. sounds like dodgy.

like you can just smell it I Just got one from the in the other day for example. and I actually, um, tweeted this the other day on Twitter it was for uh dabs. what is it Dabson? Uh, you know power. uh, brick things.

You know they're like the Eco flow battery that I got. So I get contacted bombarded with all these companies wanting me to review their batteries and dabson. they're a legitimate supplier. So I get an email from them and it says that, uh, you know, hey, we represent Debson and they even include the actual uh, the PDF you know advertising material that's they'll typically send you.

You know about the company and about their products and stuff like that. and so I I Don't know if this email was legit, but the first thing you realize is that okay, the email does not come from the Dabson domain. It doesn't come from the company domain, it comes from a Gmail account. or it comes from a Hotmail account.

or it comes from some other account and we represent. You know this company and they might. but that's your first sniff that something's not right there. Okay, so what they do is how the scam works is that they, uh, claim to represent a company.

You know it could be Nvidia video cards or some fan. You know, for a company like Linus I've had companies like that approach me. Even you know these these computer companies approach me and hey, would you like to sponsor this ship? We can. You know we'll be really flexible and you can say whatever if you want and you know it'll sound.

You know when they might even put a figure amount in there or pay you five grand or ten Grand or something like that to sponsor our content. So any especially small YouTubers Going to go. Oh, and finally hit the big leagues. I've got a sponsorship deal I've got a company who wants to sponsor me sounds really good and then they will.

If you start emailing them that you're interested, they'll uh then want to. you know for you to download some sort of executable or some other attack Vector that then they can infect you know, malware like a Trojan on your machine and then usually your machine that you're using already has you logged into your YouTube account. So once they've got that Trojan software on your machine, they have access to your YouTube account and they're bypassed your two-factor authentication because every YouTuber everyone should be using two-factor authentication. You know I physically like like Hardware Keys like UB keys and things like that.

This and it's practically impossible, but really to go through the front door and attack and hack somebody's YouTube account that way. But if you go via the back door and install Trojan software on their machine pretending to be a sponsor, then Bingo they've got you. and then once you're bypassed the two factor of authentication on YouTube, you've already got access to the account. What they do in this particular case, this is what they did to Linuses one and this is very common.

They rename the channel so it appears to be Tesla like this here it is right 15 million and then they uploaded some Elon Musk videos right? Bitcoin is back and this is how the scam. Works. They then link to a page where you know all they'll put in the comments or the description of the video you know. Bitcoin Just send us Bitcoin and we'll double.

We'll triple the amount of Bitcoin and it's just a crypto scam like this. so they're not like threatening him like you know or anything like that. They simply take over your Channel Channel They delete all your videos or they or they will upload new ones and it'll be like Elon Musk like you're teaming up with Elon Musk right? And everyone just gets duped into thinking that you know? look, Oh, a lot of stick tips have teamed up with Elon Musk and they're giving away crypto and oh I better get in on it quick. They're like Tesla like, but this is on lightness.

Tech tips his channel right so they just pretend it's a standard crypto scam thing and I saw somebody did actually uh, go through and look at the Bitcoin addresses because the whole thing about blockchain is that it's completely traceable, right? so you can trace it all through so you can see how much money they've scammed. Apparently they shut it down so quick that they didn't get much money, but some people were actually duped to send some money over I believe. But that's how the attack. and that's what the attack Vector is I almost guarantee it.

And they make so much content, they'd have multiple pre-books probably at least half a dozen people who whose machines have access to their YouTube account. They have to just to run their business right. They have to have access you know, upload access and full account access to be able to upload videos to the channel and and even even delete videos if they need to. And there's probably multiple machines in company.

There could be dozens of machines in the company that have full account access to the YouTube and YouTube channels plural, because it's usually under the same login. So once you're in, you pass the two-factor authentication and you've got access to all of the channels. This is how it happens. so I guarantee that.

Unfortunately, it's just you know, sheer bombardment with all this stuff. and they have so many sponsors, it's their whole business model. As you know, sponsorships, and everything else. Um, is a massive part of their income stream.

Not sure if it's the major, but it's a massive part. So they'd be dealing with sponsors at multiple sponsors daily sheer time. Unfortunately, until um, you know, somebody got a little bit lazy I guess and didn't do their full due diligence on the emails and installed something. and their machine had to have access.

So going forward they'd probably are going to Institute I'd say a company policy where they're going to um like airlock. uh you know a machine like nobody will be answering business emails and have access to the YouTube account on the same physical machine I Don't know if it is possible across networks I Don't think so. Leave it in the comments if you if you know of the actual you know Trojan software used to do this but warning you know, tape around it. you've got to go through.

you know, calling it off this machines for business emails and negotiating um, sponsorship details. and these machines over here are specifically for uh that have access to the YouTube channel. so unfortunately it's been taken back. are you? I'm pretty sure that you know YouTube will be able to deal with it, but it's obviously not a you know a trivial thing to do.

at least shut it down so that you know no one could get scammed out of their money. but yeah, yeah, um, unfortunately like YouTube could do a lot more I mean it's still ridiculous that YouTube can delete an account I've been saying this for donkey's years. They can actually delete your account because you got you know flagged too many times. You know once you're a large enough Channel you know, say silver 100 thousand YouTube Silver award or something.

your channel should be absolutely locked down and fully protected, right? It should require an active well was Susan alphabet but she's gone now. It should require and you know, and an act of the CEO to personally push the button to you know, delete all your content or something like that. It's just yeah, it's crazy. but yeah, apparently every channel was, uh, every video was actually actually deleted before this before they locked it down.

I'm sure it was only up for like maybe an hour or two. If anyone knows, leave it in the comments. But yeah, don't don't fall for this sort of stuff. It's um, unfortunately, it's all too common Now it's happened to the most high profile.

Channel Anyway, um, yeah, content creators be safe out there. Catch you next time.