Early on March 23, 2023, crypto scammers got control of OG tech tuber Linus Sebastian’s channel, and briefly used it to promote a Bitcoin scam, before YouTube terminated the account for a TOS violation.
With over 15-million subscribers, LTT is arguably the most influential PC channel in the world, and it isn’t just the main @linustechtips channel; Linus Media Group’s @techquickie and @techlinked are offline, too.
This is not the first time this particular group has successfully hacked a channel. @ThioJoe and @paulhibbert have both previously reported on what seems like an identical attack, using a popular channel’s views to grab clicks to crypto scam sites. LTT, briefly renamed @teslaliveonline1, published a copy of a Bitcoin-shilling video with Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey (ouch), and pushed a link to a Bitcoin pyramid scheme site.
Channel owner Linus Sebastian published a statement on his Floatplane platform, saying, “Regarding the YouTube channel hack, we are on top of it with Google’s team now. Everything should be locked down and we are getting to the bottom of the attack vector with the (hopeful) goal of hardening their security around YouTube accounts and preventing this sort of thing from happening to anyone in the future.”
Updated March 24, 2023: Linus has uploaded and shared a video with details on how it all happened, which you can watch below.
