The Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel has been hacked and is now under different management, advertising fraudulent videos featuring Elon Musk.
YouTube had a constant problem with account hacking, and now it has turned out that one of the largest channels on the platform has been hacked. LinusTechTips, known for its affordable PC hardware, has become the latest victim of these attacks.
The channel was renamed to “LinusTechTipsTemp” under the handle “@temporaryhandle”. The channel has also deleted most of its videos, although they are gradually being restored.
The hacked channel broadcast two videos in which Elon Musk talked about cryptocurrency with the original founder of Twitter. One of them is called “OpenAI ChatGPT-4: a revolutionary artificial intelligence technology”, and the other is “A special distribution of cryptocurrencies from LinusTechTips and Elon Musk”. The last stream was turned off after about 20 minutes of broadcast. The first stream went offline after about 35 minutes of broadcasting.
However, they have both been put back on the air, which appears to be a struggle between the attackers and YouTube itself.
However, both broadcasts seem identical, showing the same video. Although there is a link to the supposedly malicious “Crypto Giveaway” in the chat. It looks like this is a phishing attempt to get cryptocurrency wallet data from unsuspecting viewers.
Will LinusTechTips return their videos?
While the attackers may have already deleted most of the LinusTechTips videos, in previous cases of account hacking with video deletion, its accounts were returned after being restored by the account owner. It seems that previously deleted videos are now being restored by YouTube itself.
The re-uploaded videos also appear to include previously unlisted videos with other titles. Some videos even explicitly state “Do not download” or “Do not use” in their titles.
This has been a long-standing problem for YouTube, as another tech channel, Eteknix, was hacked a few weeks ago, but apparently he got his accounts back with all the recovered videos.
It is unclear how the hackers managed to get into the Linus Tech Tips account, although this underscores the importance of security for all accounts where possible.
The Linus Tech Tips account was blocked after the hack.
Twitch also had problems with fraudulent crypto streams that posed as Elon Musk, sometimes capturing famous streamers.
Linus responds to hacking of YouTube account
A few hours after the hack, Linus posted a message on his website “Floatplane” to confirm that they know and are working with Google to solve the problem.
“As for the hacking of the YouTube channel, now we are working with the Google team on this,” Linus said. “Everything needs to be blocked and we’re getting to the bottom of the attack vector with the (promising) goal of strengthening their security around YouTube accounts and preventing similar things from happening in the future.”
Linus also said that “at some point” there will be more information about the situation on the WAN show.
TechQuickie is also compromised
It appears that the LTT-linked TechQuickie channel has also been compromised and is posting the same video under a different name. The same can be said about Techlinked, indicating that hackers now have access to other channels owned by Linus Media Group.
