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Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) attributes the attacks to a group of hackers recruited in a Russian-speaking forum that sells the hacked YouTube channels to the highest bidder.
A new report shared by Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) highlights an ongoing phishing campaign against YouTube creators, typically resulting in the compromise and sale of channels for broadcasting cryptocurrency scams.
The TAG attributes the attacks to a group of hackers recruited in a Russian-speaking forum that hacks the creator’s channel by offering fake collaboration opportunities. Once hijacked, the YouTube channels are either sold to the highest bidder or used to broadcast cryptocurrency scams:
“A large number of hijacked channels were rebranded for cryptocurrency scam live-streaming. On account-trading markets, hijacked channels ranged from $3 USD to $4,000 USD depending on the number of subscribers.”
The YouTube accounts are reportedly being hacked using cookie theft malware, a fake software configured to run on a victim’s computer without being detected. TAG also reported that the hackers also changed the names, profile pictures and content of the YouTube channels to impersonate large tech or cryptocurrency exchange firms.
According to Google, “the attacker live-streamed videos promising cryptocurrency giveaways in exchange for an initial contribution.” The company invested in tools to detect and block phishing and social engineering emails, cookie theft hijacking and crypto-scam live streams as a countermeasure.
Given the ongoing efforts, Google has managed to decrease the volume of Gmail phishing emails by 99.6% since May 2021. “With increased detection efforts, we’ve observed attackers shifting away from Gmail to other email providers (mostly email.cz, seznam.cz, post.cz and aol.com),” the company added.
Google has shared the above findings with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States for further investigation.
Over 3.1 million (3,117,548) user email addresses were reportedly leaked from a crypto price-tracking website called CoinMarketCap.
According to a Cointelegraph report, Have I Been Pwned, a website dedicated to tracking online hacks found the hacked email addresses being traded and sold online on various hacking forums.
CoinMarketCap acknowledged the correlation of the leaked data with their userbase but maintains that no evidence of a hack has been found on their internal servers:
"As no passwords are included in the data we have seen, we believe that it is most likely sourced from another platform where users may have reused passwords across multiple sites."


Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/youtube-channels-hacked-and-rebranded-for-live-streaming-crypto-scams

According to Google's article, the malwares were able to steal cookies and passwords : Phishing campaign targets YouTube creators with cookie theft malware (https://blog.google/threat-analysis-group/phishing-campaign-targets-youtube-creators-cookie-theft-malware/)
Fortunetly, 99% of the hijacked channels were recovered.

This is alarming but good thing that since YouTube is a centralized platform the stolen accounts will eventually be returned to the rightful owners. What is noticeable here is that hackers now have the technology to override passwords and I am assuming that these famous YouTube accounts are not using too simplistic passwords. That same technology can also be used to hack on emails of people whom the hackers thinks can give them some benefits. Another lesson here is to be careful what you see, read and view on YouTube as you never know that the channel is already taken over by somebody else. Well, such is the risk when we are involved with cryptocurrency and an online platform like YouTube which can also be said on any social media platforms.

and there is actually people that sell youtube channel and live streaming scam usually only comes in matter of hour i know some of it that elon give free bitcoin or doubled amount that you invested  :-\ as long the email of account owner safe they can recover it

I saw for the second time the other day one where Saylor appeared and they promised a giveaway where in order to get a certain amount of Bitcoin, you had to send Bitcoin first to a certain address. I guess, as with all scams, they just need a small percentage of people to fall for it to be profitable.

Ok, so why is this not making the news? ==> "Over 3.1 million (3,117,548) user email addresses were reportedly leaked from a crypto price-tracking website called CoinMarketCap."  ??? ???

It is hacks and scams like this, that caused the blanket ban on all Crypto currency advertisements on large social media platforms ...during the ICO Boom period a few years ago.  >:(   Let's hope Youtube can find some way to stop this, because I think a blanket ban will be an options if they do not do this.

The "double your BTC giveaway" Youtube scam exists only because of the naive people,who fall for this s*it.
If there were no people sending their Bitcoins to the scammers,hacking Youtube channels probably wouldn't even exist,or it will exist for other scam purposes,which aren't related to Bitcoin.
It's good to see that Google is going their job of reducing the amount of phishing mails and increasing the security of all Google accounts.I think that all Google accounts should have 2 factor authentication enabled and this should become mandatory.I've already received message from Google that 2FA is mandatory for my account after October 26.

Didn't this happened already before? Too bad that after the coinmarketcap hack, this has happened next. I also believed that there's also a negligence from the owners of those channels that there's some emails that they've received and likely a sponsorship or brand deals that they like to accept the offer and asks them to click a link like a sort of form or agreement. These hackers are tricksters and does reverse engineering, I just hope that many will be aware of this scam and many will avoid it once they see these broadcasts.

The same type of incident happened on Musk stream also where hackers deployed phissing links to the site and scam thousands dollars worth of coins from people but the main point is how the hell people get attracted towards these fake sites and deposit their coins in greed to get more as they promised to double your coins within few time.Hackers will always find some way to fool you but you need to be cautious not to be the victim of these scams but still they always do such things.

Recently, a local YouTuber in my country got hacked, he had around 10m subscribers on the day he lost his account, later on, it turned into a crypto channel and a livestream wherein it only showcases a giveaway and description about that currency, everything in the livestream was actually fake, fake crypto and a fake giveaway, a whole channel intended for scamming, and finally Google realizing how impactful this is to the YouTube platform, I'm glad they have noticed this since this scam has been running for quite a long time now.

I actually searched crypto on YouTube and it was a bunch of fake livestreams, I am actually surprised that these livestreams on YT had 200+ viewers making it look legitimate somehow, but I myself am knowledgeable and can identify which is real and which is suspicious, seeing this good news from Google I think the numbers of content creators being hacked will lessen from now on.

I never thought of this kind of scam returning in these days since it was already abolished and busted last year. I mean, people already know that this kind of promotion is a scam and those scammers behind it might not aware of their victims up to date. I think they get a huge amount of money last time they did this kind of fraud and think that they might get another huge fish by doing it these days. We better spread it out cause the other newbies don't know about this thing and they might get fall into this crook's traps.

This scam method never stops. First, they we’re just within Youtube ads and now targeting high profile Youtube accounts to hack and promoting crypto scams in a live streaming mode. It’s just worse that those subscribers who are loyal and following their videos are being victimized.

Reminds me of the Twitter hack back then that famous accounts like Elon Musk are being used for a ridiculous crypto scam “giveaway”. This is really scary now especially about the cookie malware thingy. As these platforms like Youtube are increasing their security methods, these hackers are just one step ahead like they did in various cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets, platforms, etc.

Didn't this also happen in the past? A lot of youtube live streames were hacked midway with crypto advertisements, I wouldn't even doubt if there were actually legit channels that were bought just to fake crypto advertisements tbh. Wasn't that also why Youtube (Google) banned some crypto accounts? Since they were some kind of crypto scams that were being released over the youtube videos that the channels have (which is supposedly false, but rather the cause was those hacked live streams).

that's right, like this is that old trick

I still remember the scammers using the names of influential people like Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Mark Zuckerberg and others, they use fake live streaming to attract people to want to make a deposit on their fake giveaway wallet address

we have to keep telling other friends not to believe them

If this was the way the scammers used to trick the victims then I feel pretty bad for them because they were lured into the scam so easily.
Why would anyone in their right senses send crypto to an address promising to do a giveaway. If it's a giveaway it should be free.
If you are paying then the giveaway is not worth it.

Also, any scheme where we have to pay upfront to get the benefits is probably a scam. So it's better to avoid such schemes at first place.

Ok this kind of attacks have been ongoing for years now, and if I'm not mistaken, it first surface on September 2019 when a lot of youtube channels were hack and used to scam a lot thru crypto. Youtube has since issued a lot of security precautions specially for those youtube accounts that has millions of subscribers because that's why these hackers are targeting. And this is not only happening to youtube but to all other social medias like twitter and instagram.

Even a my local known people or influencers account had been hacked and ending up on posting some common hyip and ponzi investment which sadly

there are lots of subscribers do really end up on investing or sending out their money which they do believe that its the real person who is behind.

If you do have the common sense then you would most likely able to avoid on getting scammed but if you do make yourself blind then you would
really be committing some nasty mistakes and later on realized.

Youtubers and influencers are getting hacked because they click on unknown links that these hackers send to them. They download and run unknown software that leads to cookie theft, keyloggers, and whatnot. You would think that someone who lives and makes money on their online presence could spend some time to learn basic security recommendations, or at least pay someone to advise them about online threats. Until they start being more careful, we will keep hearing about similar incidents.   

I really wonder how many of these hacks are legitimate and how many of them are the channel owners in it to make some money and then can come back and say "Oh, that was not me I was hacked"
No real downside for them since most of their 'fans' will keep following them after an apology and nothing else changes.
Lets be honest, people who buy or sell crypto or anything else based on youtube videos are probably going to be fooled by just about anything.

-Dave

I was wondering how they can get money from hack youtube account?  Perhaps we are talking about gmail now. Because as far i know most influencer received an email along with the code when it comes to their salary, my question is how is that possible that the fact that every influencer already set their transaction details for youtube payment and the only thing that they need is the code in order to withdraw it.?  I mean not the money itself stored in youtube because there's no such thing  and it came from google adsense to be honest . Probably there's a chance for crypto influencer wherein if they used the same email for their digital wallet because for that reason hacker can crack it..

It can be hacked or sold channels. You can not verify and know the truth that those channels were sold or hacked.

Don't rely on Youtube channels for investments and if those channels run some requests like you have to send your money first, it is scam offer.

Always don't go first with your money, you will lose it. Especially crypto transactions are irreversible and you are making trades with people on the Internet. Even they are strangers and you don't know who they are.

This is the biggest thread for the YouTube community and the owner of that channel. Because of this, not only the youtuber but some innocent people who can't understand and fall into this trap because of the trust of their channel also lost their amount. Because of this, the bitcoin community gets hate from youtubers and subscribers too. Just think of the people whose channels had millions of subscribers and got hacked. How did they feel at that time? His whole world is like an earthquake. Though he will return to his channel, the time he has spent away from it has been excruciating.Though this type of hacker employs the same technique, which is to register as a brand on YouTube and send their link to the hacked channel.As a result, people are more likely to click on those types of brand links.Whivh is like a fear. This is a thread, I think, for brands and youtubers too.

Incidents like this happen very often. many famous youtube accounts became victims. From YouTube channels with thousands to millions of subscribers, they have been targeted.
Even private YouTube TV channels have been victims of irresponsible hackers. they hack and then upload a video as if holding a giveaway that will multiply their bitcoin or ETH assets by sending it to the address provided. The streaming videos they make are also broadcast live and are also distributed through advertisements on YouTube.
I didn't see it once or twice, but very often. Youtube really should address this issue and as a user too should be more vigilant.

Important lesson from this:

* Owners of youtube channels should be careful who they make deals with, it could be baits by hackers to takeover their accounts.

* Always verify Channels that represent certain crypto companies/personalities are not fake channels.

* If a crypto giveaway, gift or deal is too good to be true, it probably is fake or a trap.

* If the Coin Price tracking Company was actually hacked and they know nothing about it, you should be careful giving out your sensitive information to sites like that next time because they may likely be hacked constantly without knowing anything about it.

True for the most part, though a quick Google search could potentially identify any public sales of a channel, which could prevent you, and others for falling for any type of content that the malicious user puts out once they've compromised the account.

I think Youtube as a platform should identify this as a risk, and while Youtube might not like that their users are making brand deals with companies, instead of the companies coming directly to Youtube, they need to put out some education course out there to try, and reduce these instances.

This is completely user fault, and unfortunately this method of compromising an account will always be there, since people are generally quite greedy, and skip either in excitement or without actually thinking about what they've just clicked on, and who they gave their data too.  

I don't think the Bitcoin community will suffer overly so from these types of attack, I'd like to think that most people know that Bitcoin doesn't have anything to do with the way the account was compromised, and it is directly the person operating the channels fault. They have to take responsibility through their negligence.