Linus Tech Tips YouTube hacked by cryptocurrency scammers – InTheNews
One of YouTube’s most popular ‘tech advice’ channels has been compromised by cyber crooks and is posting links to crypto-currency scams.
The LinusTechTips channel – that provides various tech-themed content such as product reviews and DIY PC how-to guides and has over 15 million subscribers – began posting “live” videos on Thursday featuring Q&A talks about crypto-currency with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and Tesla founder (and now Twitter CEO) Elon Musk.
We put “live” in quotation marks here because while the videos are YouTube live videos, the content (the Q&A talks) are just recordings from a past live event. In the video description are links to crypto-currency scam websites. The crooks apparently want fans of the LinusTechTips channel to believe these links are being promoted by the channel and to click them.
Another video uploaded to the hacked channel was an Elon Musk deepfake video.
The links lead to crypto-currency scam websites that are largely par-for-the-course in the world of crypto scams. The site claims you can send cryptocurrency to a specific wallet and receive more in return (often double or triple what you send). Of course it’s a scam, and nothing gets returned, meaning the victim loses whatever crypto they send.
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Often crooks attempt to make these scams look like their endorsed by business people such as Elon Musk, or in this case, the LinusTechTips team.
The hacked YouTube account has also been posting old videos from the account with the scam links in the video description.
It is currently unclear how the crooks managed to gain access to the popular YouTube channel.
The advice here is pretty simple – don’t engage in websites that urge you to send cryptocurrency in order to get more in return. These are scams – even if they appear to be promoted from legitimate sources – for example Blue Tick Twitter accounts which were hacked in 2021 to promote the same sort of scams.
Hopefully, given the nature of the audience of LinusTechTips – tech savvy folk – the crooks didn’t manage to lure too many people into handing over their crypto.
UPDATE: Currently the main LinusTechTips YouTube channel @linustechtips is offline with a notice claiming the channel violated community standards message.
UPDATE: The Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel is back online and running normally.
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