Yesterday, a number of popular crypto YouTuber accounts were hacked and videos directing viewers to send money to the hacker’s wallet were uploaded.
Crypto YouTube accounts like ‘BitBoy Crypto’, ‘Altcoin Buzz’, ‘Box Mining’, ‘Floyd Mayweather’, ‘Ivan on Tech’, and ‘The Moon’ were among those affected by the hack.
The Binance Smart Chain wallet address that was listed on the fraudulent videos only had a total of 16 transactions in Binance Coin (BNB) at the time of writing, with a total value of around $67.01.
So the hack doesn’t appear to have been too successful.
Michael Gu, the owner of crypto YouTube channel Boxmining told Cointelegraph that his account posted a video without his permission.
‘Luckily we caught it within two minutes of the video going live and managed to delete it,’ he said. ‘By that time there were already views and comments from my community,’
An internal sweep revealed no viruses or bugs that may have given the hackers access to his account.
Gu suspects YouTube might be at fault.
According to a Reddit post, it looks like the hackers were able to gain access to the accounts using a SIM swap scam, which would have enabled them to bypass two-factor authentication (2FA).
However, Gu wasn’t convinced that the hack was a result of a SIM swap, telling Cointelegraph that there were no logins on his personal Google account.
‘If it was a SIM swap I would lose access to my phone etc and that didn’t happen,’ he said.
Judging by how so many YouTubers got hacked at the same time, Gu believes that this was likely a hack on the YouTube side or a rogue employee.
Founder and CEO of the Altcoin Buzz YouTube channel Shash Gupta added that they noticed something was amiss at around 1 AM Singapore time on Sunday night when an unauthorized video was posted to their channel.
‘I’m talking to Youtube to get to understand the matter and avoid such further breaches,’ he said.
Another crypto YouTuber Richard Heart tweeted that his channel had been banned during the middle of a live stream. YouTube replied to the tweet saying they were looking into it.
Bitcoin basics: what you need to know about the cryptocurrency
Bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrency, which is a virtual or digital currency – like an online version of cash.
It works without a central bank or any formal regulation and is usually exchanged from person-to-person when it is sold or exchanged.
Way back in 2008, someone called Satoshi Nakamoto published a nine-page white paper detailing a vision for Bitcoin — described as a ‘peer-to-peer electronic cash system’ that would function outside the reach of governments.
A few months later, Nakamoto released software that allowed users to ‘mine’ for the cryptocurrency.
Essentially, mining involves a computationally-intensive process to create new Bitcoins. The more Bitcoins are mined, the harder the process becomes – requiring more computer power which gives Bitcoin its environmentally-negative reputation.
There are only a finite amount of Bitcoins that can ever be produced and circulated which gives it its scarcity and, in theory, value.
People can track their ownership of Bitcoin by using a cryptocurrency wallet, which is a digital way to exchange payments.
It is easy to track as details are stored in a ledger called blockchain, which is publicly accessible and it includes all confirmed transactions.
The value of the cryptocurrency fluctuates all the time in a similar way to more conventional currencies.
Metro.co.uk has reached out to YouTube for comment on the hack.
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