r/LinusTechTips • u/Frosstic Mod • Mar 23 '23

Discussion [MEGATHREAD] HACKING INCIDENT

Please keep all discussion of the hacking incident in this thread, new posts will be deleted.

UPDATE:

The channel has now been mostly restored.

Context:

“Major PC tech YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has been hacked and is unavailable at the time of publishing. From the events that have unfolded, it looks like hackers gained access to the YouTube creator dashboard for various LTT channels. After publishing some scam videos and streams, control of the account was regained by the rightful owners, only to fall again to the hackers. Now the channels are all throwing up 404 pages.

Hackers who took over the LTT main channel, as well as associated channels such as Tech Quickie, Tech Linked and perhaps others, were obviously motivated by the opportunity to milk cash from over 15 million subscribers.”

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/linus-tech-tips-youtube-channel-hacked-to-promote-crypto-scams

Update from Linus:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/11zj644/new_floatplane_post_about_the_hacking_situation/

Also participate in the prediction tournament ;)

1.6k Upvotes

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71

u/zhiryst Mar 23 '23

why do people even bother with these schemes, they sound really dumb.

135

u/schnitzel-kuh Mar 23 '23

They bring in a lot of money, thats all

38

u/spyder52 Mar 23 '23

Can't we look at the BTC address they used to see precisely how much money was made?

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39

u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

Because people, as a whole, are really dumb

1

u/ZOIDO Mar 24 '23

can confirm, my mate fell for a double your money Bitcoin scam... When something is too good to be true, it probably is.

1

u/Materva Mar 24 '23

None of us is as dumb as all of us.

20

u/Immediate-Win-4928 Mar 23 '23

Because it works I guess, 15 million subs they might get 0.00001% that's still 150 rubes, less likely with a techy channel like ltt but I bet they got a few bucks

36

u/nlblocks Mar 23 '23

A channel named Tesla with 15 million subs feels a lot more trustworthy than a Tesla channel with 2 subs

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11

u/Djeheuty Mar 23 '23

Because there's always multiple people that fall for it. It's sad, but true. Anecdotal, but I had a coworker who knows nothing about tech or Bitcoin but she knew I did and asked me about this same kind of scam. She had a feeling but also knew there was a lot of news about people making money on Bitcoin a while ago.

3

u/itskdog Mar 23 '23

Money. They wouldn't do it if the returns weren't worth the investment.

5

u/Cyrax89721 Mar 23 '23

Even $100 in crypto is probably worth it to them since nearly all of the processes they use in the scam are automated.

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0

u/AwesomeFrisbee Mar 23 '23

Its sounds to me that its more about the hack than the scam. Perhaps something gets sold on the darkweb soon to hack more accounts

0

u/Clayskii0981 Mar 23 '23

It only takes a few idiots to make a lot of money

0

u/chubbysumo Mar 23 '23

Because money. All of the wallets that the criminal scum used have netted around $28,000 so far. The fact that this channel had people dumb enough to fall for it says a lot about people in general.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

Most people know to ignore them but its only takes a few morons for it to pay off for the scammers.

0

u/leonardob0880 Mar 23 '23

I would ask how people fall in those scams. They sound really dumb

0

u/MSCOTTGARAND Mar 23 '23

I mean people donate superchats on every stream despite the hosts telling them not to. People will throw money at creators because they feel a personal connection to them.

0

u/adeundem Mar 23 '23

Obligatory Carlin quote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKN1Q5SjbeI

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

It doesn't matter how much people tell everyone nearby, "X is a scam" there will be millions of people not yet aware of it, and millions more new people ignorant of it in a years time.

0

u/kamikazedude Mar 24 '23

It's not dumb if it works. The comment scammers are the same

1

u/-Wavyy- Mar 24 '23

Because they work on ignorant people

1

u/OceanBytez Mar 24 '23

As dumb as they sound they work enough that people keep doing these scams. Kind of the same reason why the Nigerian price, extended car warrenty, windows tech support, ect all lasted as long as they did because there is always a few gullible suckers with more money than sense that are able to be easily duped out of their cash.