Linus Tech Ideas is certainly one of YouTube’s hottest content material creators for tech {hardware}, with over 15 million followers on the platform. That modified in a short time after the account was hacked by crypto scammers who used it to run Bitcoin advertisements. The account has now been “terminated,” in accordance with an error web page on particular person LTT movies.
In response to The Verge, the hacker accessed Linus Sebastian’s account earlier this morning. They made a number of reside broadcasts about Elon Musk and Bitcoin. Sebastian mentioned in a later video that he was enjoying “whack a mole” with the hackers as he tried to personal the streams, revoked the stream key, and tried to reset his account credentials. The hacker responded by reuploading the stream and deleting Sebastian’s movies.
The account was ultimately deleted by YouTube for violating the phrases of service. Different {hardware} accounts underneath the Linus media conglomerate had been additionally hit, together with Techquicke and TechLinked.
LTT followers have noted that nearly a decade’s price of movies had been deleted. Sebastian has backed up his outdated movies utilizing a “Vault” backup system, and is an advocate of utilizing the 3-2-1 methodology of storing knowledge throughout a number of storage units (together with one offsite). “After being alerted by the Linus Tech Ideas workforce that their account was compromised as a consequence of unauthorized entry, our workforce investigated the difficulty and labored with them to safe and restore their account,” wrote a YouTube spokesperson in an e-mail. Kotaku additionally reached out to Sebastian for a remark however didn’t obtain one by the point of publication.
YouTube crypto scams should not a brand new phenomenon. The British Military had its account hacked final yr, and it was became an promoting platform for cryptocurrency. Some scammers with out the savvy to hack high-profile YouTube accounts have resorted to impersonation as a substitute, similar to this not-Tesla account. Apparently, the cryptocurrency ecosystem is crammed with shills that don’t have the expertise or credibility to develop their very own audiences and resort to utilizing different folks’s visibility and exhausting work as a substitute.
Sebastian appears to be taking the hacking in good humor, telling his followers that they need to watch ShortCircuit, a Linus Media Group account that was not hit by a crypto hacker.
Correction 3/23/23 at 3:30 p.m. E.T.: Added extra details about Sebastian’s storage strategies and corrected that ShortCircuit is a Linus Media Group account.
Replace 3/24/23 at 9:34 a.m. E.T.: The Linus Tech Ideas YouTube account is again on-line. Sebastian uploaded a brand new video this morning explaining what had taken place.
Replace 3/24/23 at 3:23 p.m. E.T.: Added YouTube’s feedback.
