Reports said that hackers attacked a number of popular crypto YouTuber accounts at some point during Sunday afternoon, as the accounts posted unauthorized videos with text directing viewers to send money to the hacker's wallet.
It has been reported that accounts that appear to have been targeted by the attack include BitBoy Crypto, Altcoin Buzz, Box Mining, Floyd Mayweather, Ivan on Tech, and The Moon, among others.
However, the Binance Smart Chain wallet address that was listed on the fraudulent videos only had a total of nine transactions in BNB, with a total value of around $850, as of January 23.
Michael Gu said that his YouTube channel Boxmining posted a video without his permission.
He added:
“Luckily, we caught it within two mins of the video going live and managed to delete it. By that time, there were already views and comments from my community.”
He added that he had done an internal sweep and found no viruses or bugs that may have given the hackers access to his account.
Gu said:
“Seems like YouTube might be responsible.”
The report said that one Reddit post by user “9Oh8m8” suggested that it appears as though 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).
They said:
“They are all posting with a title like "ONE WORLD CRYPTOCURRENCY." They have an address in vid and description to send your USDT/USDC/BNB/ETH to receive a new crypto called OWCY.”
Gu wasn’t convinced that the hack was a result of a SIM swap, as he said that there were no logins on his personal Google account.
He said:
“If it was a SIM swap, I would lose access to my phone, etc., and that didn’t happen. What we noticed was on the BRAND account (which doesn’t have a login. YouTube brand accounts are connected to personal) there was a login from the Philippines. Very likely, this is either a hack on YouTube side or a rogue employee. That’s how they got so many people at the same time.”
Shash Gupta, the founder and CEO of the Altcoin Buzz YouTube channel, said that they noticed something was amiss at around 1:00 am Singapore time (5:00 pm UTC) on Sunday night when an unauthorized video was posted to their channel.
Thus, Gupta added:
“It’s pretty unclear what happened. I’m talking to Youtube to get to understand the matter and avoid such further breaches.”
Source: Cointelegraph