Linus Tech Tips main YouTube channel hacked

3 years ago 1

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Well-known technology YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has been hijacked by a malicious actor and is using it to promote a cryptocurrency scam.

Linus Tech Tips has over 15 million subscribers.

The attackers appear to have ripped a recording of a session from 2021’s The ₿ Word conference that featured investor Cathie Wood, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and current Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

The malicious live stream on Linus Tech Tips’ channel is using keywords involving artificial intelligence, GPT–4, and OpenAI to get viewers.

It is promoting a QR code and URL directing people to a Tesla-branded website claiming to give away crypto worth $100,000,000.

It’s a classic fake money-doubling scam promising to pay you back double any amount of bitcoin, ethereum, dogecoin, or USD tether that you send to a designated address.

The attacker appears to have gained access to the Linus Tech Tips channel and changed the channel handle from @LinusTechTips to @teslaliveonline1.

At the time of publication, the channel handle had been changed again to @temporaryhandle, with the channel name changed to LinusTechTipsTemp.

All videos newer than seven years old have either been deleted or made private.

YouTube Linus Sebastian created the Linus Tech Tips channel in November 2008.

He would go on to found Linus Media Group in January 2013 out of a garage.

The company is headquartered in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada.

MyBroadband contacted Linus Media Group for comment but it had not responded by publication, when it was just before 05:00 in British Colombia, Canada.