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Bitcoin Scammers Rebrand Jon Prosser’s YouTube Channel as ‘NASA’

YouTube took down Jon Prosser’s channel with 262K subscribers after hackers used it to promote a free Bitcoin giveaway scam.
Scammers have conned more YouTube viewers into sending them Bitcoin after hacking several more large verified accounts and posting ‘free giveaway’ videos.

According to an Aug. 5 tweet posted by Jon Prosser, his Front Page Tech YouTube channel with 262,000 subscribers was hacked by bad actors who changed the name to “NASA [news]” and began live streaming a fake Bitcoin (BTC) giveaway video featuring SpaceX’s Elon Musk.

“Hackers have made $4,000 in Bitcoin so far,” said Prosser. “YouTube tells me I need to fill out a form and wait ‘a few weeks.’”
Seven years’ worth of Front Page Tech’s videos were deleted by the scammers. YouTube took the channel down roughly two hours after Prosser first noticed the breach, and it remains offline.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-scammers-rebrand-jon-prossers-youtube-channel-as-nasa

The attacker used sim swap attack to gain access to Jon Prosser’s 2FA, the 2FA is used to access his YouTube Channel and renamed it as NASA which is used to scam people.

We need to be careful of free giveaway, they are not free but scam and fake as fake can be.

The worst scam has been happening on YouTube channels. I don't know how bitcoin users fall into this trap. It's sad to see that scammers are even able to bypass the 2FA authentication. To be honest, a bitcoin user should know about basic scams which is ongoing currently. Giveaway scam already is a viral subject, so I think it's pretty easy to avoid such as scam just using our common sense. We should know that either this giveaway announced from a well-known person, but there is no such as method double your bitcoin instantly.

Scammers are very intelligent and always think ahead of people;. How could they bypass the 2fA authentication? The deed has been done already we just have to be wary of these petty scams going on a daily occurrence with the hope of enriching us with ×4 of our pennies.

Are they? They did not bypass 2FA but they did sim swapping, which isn't really that hard of a deal
They can make much much more with proper use of those hacked accounts/channel. But they end up pulling off a small stupid one.

I guess if you are a Youtube content creator and you have a lot of subscribers, be better prepared for this kind of attacks. And Youtube are already informing those creators of the dangers and how to protect their account.

Again, the only weapons to fight this kind of fake giveaways in Youtube is to really educate ourselves before it's too late.

I quoted this from the OP link source:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-scammers-rebrand-jon-prossers-youtube-channel-as-nasa
But the way this happened is what we have to figure out. Because some information about someone can be gotten from sim swapping indirectly through different means, this would have possibly led to the attack as reported by cointelegraph.

Another youtube hack? Another stolen channel? Seems that google did not really improve anything since first Elon Mask giveaway appeared months ago.
Btw, I see this scam if frequently promoted on bumping services (place were user gets paid few cents for clicking like or dislike under the video). Its either these services know what they ask users to promote, or simply did not make a scam check.

Damn this so called sim swap has claimed many victims, if you have that huge number of subscribers you should take all the necessary
 precautions and get to know all the traps scammers are employing to hack channels, I figure that these scammers are still getting a lot of victims because they are not yet stopping their activities.

Your own defense is the knowledge that you have to fully secures your account.

YouTube also needs to be more responsible in terms of live streaming, as in a short period of time this kind of fake
giveaways able to scammed out money from poor people who are not aware.

In creators side, strengthening defense and always be updated with every news that take place regarding to this kind of hacking.

The guy probably had all necessary security measures, but still was hacked due to sim swap attack. How can he be responsible for that (you say "Your own defense is the knowledge that you" , if the one to blame is a mobile operator probably and technology. What can this guy do to protect himself from sim swap?

Youtube's new content creator policy clearly state now that any channel that promotes cryptocurrency scams will straight away get banned. I assume they have banned this channel after it got hacked Bitcoin scammers.

Intrestingly channel hacking has become more easy for scammers now days then it was earlier. Almost all channels get hacked because of the owners error in judgement. In such cases Youtube is also helpless and cannot do a lot.

I've never heard of the guy, but I've seen a channel I liked being hacked and used for the bitcoin giveaway stuff once. Unfortunately, people fall for this. Moreover, it's alarming that Youtube account hacks are quite frequent, which probably means their security measures aren't tight enough. Apart from that, Youtube tends to be slow with reactions and resolvings of such cases. I could not find the original channel with scam, however, so maybe this time they reacted fast. However, just as in the case I've seen months ago, the scammers are not using only one account. Here's another one that's live steaming scam right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkgJKYpTo5o. I've reported the video, perhaps you could do the same.

Sometimes I think that sites the those giveaway (and scams) persist should also be penelized accordingly so that the giveaway scams don't last even a minute.
It's really unfortunate and abit shocking that the evil persists on large sites

It's really sad for the YouTube channel owners as these shitty people are taking away their hard worked passion and time in just a few seconds.
But this won't work for longer time as YouTube security is very strong.
So the Channel owners are gaining back their channel's ownership very quickly.
The only thing that is sad that, the nobel Bitcoin users who fall into the scam of these people and thereby losing their Bitcoins.
Nevertheless we need to be just careful and should watch ourselves.

Don't use SMS 2fa in the first place? Hacking through sim swap attacks are really nothing new and have been shared a lot on Twitter already(he's quite active on his Twitter account). It's highly unlikely that he hasn't heard of sim swaps, also knowing that he's in the tech space. This is most likely just the case of having the "it wouldn't happen to me lul" excuse.

With the sim swapping racket, mobile sms has became less secure. Till a better option arrives, google authentictor would be a better option. Platforms like youtube also should monitor the password and name changes as well live videos actively. If I just opened my youtube now, the home screen would have at least a fake bitcoin giveaway.

Obviously these guys are the same with the one who hacks the twitter pages of the known people on the internet including bill gates. I guess we should take care of our other social media accounts especially those who have some huge followers on their hands. For they will going to hack it next judging by their way of hacking from one to another social media on the internet.

According to the one of the article I read earlier the hackers has some access to the tools which is were supposed to have only been available to its own staff or the people who have privelaged to do the moderation job.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/122C6/production/_113483447_twitter-reu-apf.jpg

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53455092

If its easy to use the simswapping then there will be no safe place for anyone. They can login whichever account whe have that we use 2fa only including the emails we have used on registering accounts. Google authentictor must be a good option. They would need the code from the app which is a lot harder if not impossible to get.

Very alarming that a hacker can  access just about anything nad worse delete all the hard word you did. In the case of Jon Prosser, his videos created 7 years ago.

TOTP[1] 2FA is the best option, and I can't see how it would be replaced anytime soon. Any more convenient than TOTP 2FA, chances are, it will require central custody(unless someone invented a really clever tech), which is something we wouldn't want.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_One-time_Password_algorithm

This "Youtube giveaway" scam has been in the news for months.Most of the people should already know about this scam and I wonder what kind of people are still falling into such trap.
I think that after a while,this scam method will be almost completely dead,due to the mainstream media that are raising awareness and the hackers will move towards other methods.I feel bad for the people,who lost their Bitcoins and also for the Youtube creators,who lost their channels. :(  I hope that Youtube will step in and return the channels to their owners and the scammers will get caught.

If that's possible it will bring more strict facilitation of those social media / streaming sites.

A  good idea in order for this sites to really take care of their business,
though this scamming thing is already been here for quite a long time,
people should learned now not to participate.

Really damaging to Bitcoin when something like this is happening.
They manage to scam some $4000 worth of BTC. Is this amount worth flagging the exchanges that they'd freeze the account if they find the funds sent to them?

If they can target a popular youtube user and then hacked his account as they got into his email then its definitely a huge flaw to security, sim swapping is like having the phone of the owner and much like nothing else can be done.

There were some reports about the youtube profile hack as well in few days back. One of the popular Indian youtuber account was hacked on 26th july and the hackers were claiming BTC donation.  https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/social/carry-minati-youtube-channel-hacked-6522942/ (https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/social/carry-minati-youtube-channel-hacked-6522942/) Still youtube has not found out any solution to their flaws.

No one can be ever careful and what people need is to understand how crypto scammer operate cause everything that seems good to be truth is always scam and I once said in my previous post that some people will still be a victim of this same strategy used by scammers. However, people need to understand that whenever the market is bullish 85% of online theft focus on crypto.

Though I agree that it's frustrating that people are still getting scammed by such an old method, let's not forget that people today still fall for phishing scams and ponzi schemes. Such scams would just decrease effectiveness as time goes, but it will not totally be 100% ineffective.


Something could be done. Don't use SMS 2FA, and instead use TOTP 2FA. It's pretty simple.

Good point. If it is obvious that TOPT 2FA is way secured than SMS 2FA, why then google still use it and frequently remind to set it and add second mobile number for security reasons.

Youtube and other google services users should start a petition to remove SMS 2FA option from offered security options. Do you agree? 

Oh no..This is bad for cryptocurrency. I expect that somehow could do good to our comfort accdg. to its purpose but it seems that many had been abusing cryptocurrency now like this hacking activity on youtube now doing fraud to 262k subscribers. This is very bad and possible many will fall foe this trap. Anyway, does it happen that the youtube account already reported to youtube admin? I think it does need for the account to be temporarily close.

Each and every day something bad happens and they use cryptocurrency, the more the establishment wants it dead. This is a sad case of a youtube channel hacked to be used to scam people. The users, developers, investors, miners, and all other people that is behind all the successful coins, should come together and make a statement condemning these crimes and declare that cryptocurrency should not tolerate these kinds of scams. Many scams are also done in fiat currency but that is not being discriminated upon by society. That should be the general idea that we all need to tell the world.

I've watch a video of sim swap, and I must say that this is a very obvious one to scam people, I mean why would you let an individual to get your phone? what's worst is he's not looking if he lets it borrowed fom him. Is this the reason of why he had his channel be gone? or you just conclude it? 2FA will not be bypassed if this is what the hacker used to do since it is direct change from the authenticator. I really doubt that it is the reason behind the hacking, it is really just impossible for a youtuber to be tricked by this simple and long procedure stuff.

How? I mean I can't imagine how the hacking has been done using a giveaway, I'm clueless af, could you explain? i'm so sorry.

Scamming and hacking these days are high level, don't be caught off guard by any one.

It seems that not only was Jon Prosser's account hacked to provide free bitcoin giveaway promotions, but several larger and verified accounts were also hit.
But quickly these accounts were deleted by YouTube to avoid widespread fraud.

this is for several times big social media has been hacked and uses big accounts to commit fraud, the possibility of hacking is clear because usually the accounts used by hackers cannot be controlled due to the busyness of the account users. besides maybe if the account has its own admin chances are that hacks will be detected earlier.

the problem is because the hack brings bitcoin, because this will have a positive impact "to be better known" and can be negative "the government is more selective in accepting bitcoin as a legal medium of exchange". but actions like this are very unfortunate and there are still some who do things that are not praiseworthy.

Because though SMS 2FA has it's downsides(obviously a perfect example is what happened to Jon Prosser), having SMS 2FA is still far better than having no 2FA at all. It's still another layer of security that hackers need to get through, which really isn't that easy(though obviously not impossible either).


No.

if scammers still get money from hacked youtube channels, that means there are still many beginners who are easy to trick and are tempted by gifts like this, even though they should be smarter if there is free money why send money first, it's funny even for me Even small children understand that if it is a scam, there should be more people who have a YouTube channel to educate about it

BTCBTC Sometimes I think that sites the those giveaway (and scams) persist should also be penelized accordingly so that the giveaway scams don't last even a minute.
It's really unfortunate and abit shocking that the evil persists on large sites

Scammer in youtube channel with big subscribers are always worrying. Moroever for the beginers. because they always are easily scammed and intriguided with something promising, but exactly scam. This is a good thing that YouTube has taken down that channel. It is a begining way to prevent from many more scams.
However, the problem is how's about the owner of the channel before hacked?

In this case, there may need some increases of the security system on YouTube to reduce the hack possibility. It also becomes the challenges of every owner of YouTube channel to make like double secuirty system to login in the channel.
However once more, hakcers will always do evrtying to succeed their hacking. This is so sad also when knowing the channel with big subscribers hacked and used for scams. It really detrimental to channel owners, viewers, and victims of scams.

Many YouTube crypto channels will be blocked soon. Unfortunately for crypto opponents, this is one of the ways to fight

Don't believe in that conspiracy. As long as there's no violation found on their channels with the YouTube terms and agreement, their channel will remain.

Altcoin Daily for example.

Their channels was gone and it was retrieved by YouTube again.