A handful of high-level YouTube accounts have been hacked for the purpose of streaming a bitcoin scam.
What you need to know
- Apple leaker Jon Prosser’s YouTube account was hacked.
- Prosser is one of a handful of high-profile accounts that have been hacked.
- The hack appears to have been going on for a while now.
Update, August 6 (05:20 am ET) Overnight, a Bitcoin scam livestreamed on Front Page Tech reached over 100,000 viewers, likely faked through botting to push the video onto people’s frontpages. As noted by Rene Ritchie, at one point YouTube was recommending the video to users. Jon Prosser has confirmed that the channel’s 2FA was “bypassed”, possibly by a sim swap, and that hackers had made $4,000 in Bitcoin so far. At about 7pm ET, Prosser Tweeted noting that all the videos on Front Page Tech had been deleted, a couple of hours later, the entire channel had gone from YouTube. It is unclear at this time whether the channel has been deleted maliciously, or taken down by YouTube to prevent further disruption and to stop the attack. A direct message from TeamYouTube on Twitter shared by Prosser asked him to fill out a form, but that it “may take a few weeks to hear back with concrete next steps.” Following our original story, other creators, including Chilling Tales for Dark Nights came forward stating their own storytelling/audiobook channel, with 339k subs was attacked in this way on 7/29 and that they were “still waiting for YouTube to do anything about it.”
Famed Apple leaker Jon Prosser recently tweeted that his YouTube channel, Front Page Tech has been hacked. At the time of this writing, the channel’s name has been changed to NASA [News], his entire library of videos appear to have been deleted except for a live-streaming bitcoin scam video that currently has 48,000 views.
Yo, the Front Page Tech channel was somehow hacked. @TeamYouTube – help ASAP
— Jon Prosser (@jon_prosser) August 5, 2020
Prosser believes that this hack was a “complete SIM swap.” He and his team no longer have access to the channel at all.
YouTube support did get in touch with Prosser about an hour ago, but the response doesn’t provide a whole lot of hope.
Channel hacked. 2FA bypassed. Live-streaming a Bitcoin scam to 40,000 live viewers. Hackers have made $4,000 in Bitcoin so far. @TeamYouTube tells me I need to fill out a form and wait “a few weeks”. If any ACTUAL YouTube reps see this, please get in contact with me. pic.twitter.com/s276Wp1LAt
— Jon Prosser (@jon_prosser) August 6, 2020
Prosser is not the first high-profile YouTube influencer to be attacked. According to esports commentator Rod Breslau, several YouTube channels have been hacked and had their account names changed to such titles as “Elon Musk NASA,” “SpaceX NASA” and similar. Breslau first noted this hack on August 3.
happening again right now: many more large verified YouTube accounts have been hacked including @jon_prosser bypassing 2FA, have had their names changed to Elon Musk NASA, and are live streaming Bitcoin scams with over 100,000 fake viewers through botting https://t.co/eYZ90wNuce pic.twitter.com/JCfxtRk7yB
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) August 6, 2020
Breslau notes that this has been an ongoing issue that YouTube has not yet addressed.
From talking to YouTubers these stolen account bitcoin scams have been going on for months and way longer than the recent Twitter hack, YouTube has yet to address the problem, and they’re making people wait weeks to get their account back.
This story is ongoing and we’re updating as information unfolds.
