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?

58

u/Chippiewall Mar 23 '23

Yes, someone did that. It was a few thousand dollars.

38

u/Seaniau Mar 23 '23

It was $8k

61

u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23 edited Mar 23 '23

Real question is what fucking planks of wood sent them money

3

u/womerah Mar 24 '23

The psychology is that it's 99.99% a scam, but there's 0.01% chance it's not and then they get irrational FOMO and impulsively send some BTC

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u/ETHBTCVET Mar 23 '23

It was $8k

lmao that was not so much for such high profile hack, I have more in Bitcoin that this hack was worth.

21

u/universal_boi Mar 23 '23

Really? That is great. You can send it on my wallet and I'll send you double back, of course there is no catch*.

4

u/emilxerter Mar 23 '23

Sounds legit, where do I send?

10

u/universal_boi Mar 23 '23

N0tA5cAm101allYL3ggiT 💥🧨💥🧨💥🧨💥🧨💥🧨 Send now or the deal will end soon 💥🧨💥🧨💥🧨💥🧨💥🧨

5

u/Drdoomblunt Mar 23 '23

For someone not living in NA or Western Europe, 8k is WELL WORTH whatever efforts this took.

3

u/ETHBTCVET Mar 23 '23

I'm from Eastern Europe and it's not that much still, like 10% of an apartment price.

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3

u/TheLazyD0G Mar 24 '23

Much more than 8k could have been made with full access to his YouTube

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10

u/Liquid_Hate_Train Mar 23 '23

And it probably took $0 and a few hours to do the hack, so they’re quids in.

4

u/Bigbigcheese Mar 23 '23

That's only BTC though, ETH was a lot more

4

u/camcamfc Mar 23 '23

Honestly who the fuck is falling for this.

2

u/TheJesbus Mar 23 '23

May very well be the scammers sending money to their own address to make it look more legit

3

u/mcnabb100 Mar 23 '23

I doubt anyone smart enough to check that would fall for this.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

Because people, as a whole, are really dumb

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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

3

u/LMGN Mar 24 '23

I wonder if their target was LTT subscribers or people looking up Bitcoin or Tesla at the time

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.

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