On January 23rd, hackers overtook the Youtube accounts of popular crypto influencers and posted unauthorized videos. The videos and with a text that told viewers to send their coins to the wallet address of the hacker.
Some of the accounts that were targeted pulled in millions of viewers, and they include ‘BitBoy Crypto’, ‘Altcoin Buzz’, ‘Box Mining’, ‘Floyd Mayweather’, ‘Ivan on Tech’, ‘The Moon’, and so on.
The scam videos featured a BSC wallet address that had a total of 9 BNB transactions which was over $850.
According to a tweet by BoxMining, one of the YouTubers that was affected,
“Is my account hacked? So my @YouTube account published a video out of the blue – I never uploaded ANYTHING. Managed to delete the video the moment it came out. Doing a security sweep now.”
In another tweet, he stated,
“My YouTube account (along with many others) was hijacked today – it posted some scam video about “one world cryptocurrency”. This is a scam and I’ve never uploaded or authorized this video. This is likely a hijacking attack on YouTube as there are more than 30 YouTubers affected.”
BoxMining confirmed that his personal accounts were not tampered with by intruders, but the leak came from his YouTube Brand account, which had an unauthorized login from the Philippines.
Boxmining also stated the accounts of some influencers that had also suffered the hack,
“Many Crypto Youtubers (including me) got hacked today – all publishing a scam video at around the same time – @IvanOnTech @aantonop @Bitboy_Crypto @Altcoinbuzzio @FloydMayweather @crypto_banter @CoinMarketCap. I have 2FA enabled.”
Boxmining was seemingly keen to make clear that he had two-factor authentication enabled on his account, which obviously did stop the hack. A Reddit user made a post, where they suggested that the hackers may have accessed the accounts by utilizing the SIM swap scam, which allegedly made them overcome the two-way factor authentication system that the YouTubers incorporated. The post went on to state,
“They all post with a title like ‘one world cryptocurrency’. They have a video address and description to send your USDT/USDC/BNB/ETH to receive new crypto called Owcy.“
Richard Heart, a crypto YouTuber stated in a tweet that his channel was banned during a live stream, which means that YouTube may be aware of the incident.
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