Linus Media Group YouTube Channels Hacked

Status
Not open for further replies.
erek

erek

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Dec 19, 2005
Messages
12,696
No words

"Prior to being terminated—likely temporarily, given Linus Media Group is a YouTube partner with a solution on the way no doubt—for being automatically flagged as a result of violating YouTube community guidelines, the Linus Tech Tips channel re-uploaded many older videos, including some that had been marked as "do not publish." It is unclear to what extent Linus Sebastian and other members of LMG are currently aware of this crisis, but as of yet, no updates or statements have been made from the personal account of Linus or the main Linus Tech Tips Twitter account. The most recent Linus Tech Tips tweet is 13 hours old. This post will be updated as more details become available."

Source: https://www.techpowerup.com/306329/linus-media-group-youtube-channels-hacked
 
Wow, I would think he would have an exclusive authenticator from Google to log into his account.
 
The problem is who knows how many people on his staff had access. If one of those people's machines got compromised, and had a saved password it's over. Or, the hackers could have just brute forced the log in if 2FA wasn't enable.
 
Everyone is just getting in the office over there too now. I hope they make a video of the crap that they going through right now.
 
OFaceSIG said:
The problem is who knows how many people on his staff had access. If one of those people's machines got compromised, and had a saved password it's over. Or, the hackers could have just brute forced the log in if 2FA wasn't enable.
Click to expand...
He has 2FA at the minimum. I don't see many in his company that would have access to his channel.
 
Darunion said:
social engineering always finds a way past 2fa. Just need to sound like him over the phone and have enough details. Okay everyone begin your auditions for the next linus!
Click to expand...
If it was social engineering just based off of a phone call there is probably an AI that could mimic him easily given all the samples available of his voice to train it with.
 
LurkerLito said:
If it was social engineering just based off of a phone call there is probably an AI that could mimic him easily given all the samples available of his voice to train it with.
Click to expand...
Whoa this just popped brain cells, i have honestly never thought of that as a problem. Ugh.
 
I was in the middle of watching his 500Hz monitor vid when the channel got taken down and then saw it say the channel has been terminated. I immediately tried to imagine the bonfire they're trying to put out right now, lol.

Was about to make a thread about it myself since I caught it immediately, but I have a strange affliction towards making threads.
 
T4rd said:
I was in the middle of watching his 500Hz monitor vid when the channel got taken down and then saw it say the channel has been terminated. I immediately tried to imagine the bonfire they're trying to put out right now, lol.

Was about to make a thread about it myself since I caught it immediately, but I have a strange affliction towards making threads.
Click to expand...
 
Good luck Linus. You're going to need it.

A few years ago a streamer I know had his youtube hacked and deleted. The kafkaesque clusterfrack that was Google's support took so long passing his requests from one sympathetic but powerless person to the next that the years of guides and tutorials were all past the undelete point and gone by the time he got his account back.
 
DanNeely said:
Good luck Linus. You're going to need it.

A few years ago a streamer I know had his youtube hacked and deleted. The kafkaesque clusterfrack that was Google's support took so long passing his requests from one sympathetic but powerless person to the next that the years of guides and tutorials were all past the undelete point and gone by the time he got his account back.
Click to expand...
He has backups of all his videos dating back to the begining I am sure. He could be back up and running easily compared to most people bet.
 
I ignored this chump on youtuber a long long time ago. I think I did that for Jay2cents as well....I miss the old days when Kyle did all the cool stuff. Tech Jesus is ok...but he goes far too deep sometimes and I can only see him sweep his hair behind his ears three or four times before I close the video.
 
Security is a chain and like any chain it's weakest link dictates the strength of the chain. Every single person that has access to those accounts adds a plethora of vectors for attack. In a world where Russians have been living off cat-food, vodka, and cigarettes for almost 80 years the value of those hacks to Russia is hard to overstate.

An aside: Damnit I miss long form, written articles on sites like the [H]. I guess there's no money in it but let's be honest: Kyle was terrible at merch, I'm still using my two Ratpadz. How you gonna make money if your merch won't die?
 
vegeta535 said:
Looks like the entire channel is gone now. All his other channels seem to still be intact. How the hell does he of all people get his channel hacked.
Click to expand...

I mean, have you watched his videos?

Entertaining as he can be, in many of them he comes across as a bumbling fool who doesn't know what he is doing.

He makes more beginner mistakes when it comes to tech than some actual beginners I know.

He's not exactly what I would consider some sort of mastermind of the tech world. He was a sales guy before he got into YouTube, not an engineer or a technician. That's all you need to know about a person really. I've never met a sales guy who knew shit about shit.

 
Last edited:
I'd imagine if you are a high profile channel, it's just a matter of reaching out to Google, and they push the magic reset button, and all is back to normal.

It's not as if Google actually ever deletes anything.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I mean, have you watched his videos?

Entertaining as he can be, in many of them he comes across as a bumbling fool who doesn't know what he is doing.

He makes more beginner mistakes when it comes to tech than some actual beginners I know.

He's not exactly what I would consider some sort of mastermind of the tech world. He was a sales guy before he got into YouTube, not an engineer or a technician. That's all you need to know about a person really. I've never met a sales guy who knew shit about shit.
Click to expand...
Latest update is that LMG is highly encouraging liking and subscribing to all their content on Floatplane now
 
Darunion said:
social engineering always finds a way past 2fa. Just need to sound like him over the phone and have enough details. Okay everyone begin your auditions for the next linus!
Click to expand...

You're missing out on the promise of Google 2FA; because their support team doesn't have access to do anything useful, social engineering is impossible. You can't social engineer a brick wall.
 
Darunion said:
Honestly to me he reminds me of the infomercial people on late at night
Click to expand...
"youre gonna love my nuts!!"


Zarathustra[H] said:
Entertaining as he can be, in many of them he comes across as a bumbling fool who doesn't know what he is doing.

He makes more beginner mistakes when it comes to tech than some actual beginners I know.
Click to expand...
his team really does all the work for him, he's just a presenter.



ryan reynolds must have gotten it taken down ;)
google can probably fix it, unless everything was deleted first...
ps: ignore all the fake channels "hosting" LTT videos
 
pendragon1 said:
"youre gonna love my nuts!!"



his team really does all the work for him, he's just a presenter.



ryan reynolds must have gotten it taken down ;)
google can probably fix it, unless everything was deleted first...
ps: ignore all the fake channels "hosting" LTT videos
Click to expand...
they're saying to sign up for a Floatplane subscription to get access to LTT content in the meantime
 
toast0 said:
You're missing out on the promise of Google 2FA; because their support team doesn't have access to do anything useful, social engineering is impossible. You can't social engineer a brick wall.
Click to expand...
So then the likely path into his account was through his own pc and/or wherever he stored his backup codes im guessing?

Be kinda funny if the holy grail of information stored all his stuff in passwords.txt on desktop
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I mean, have you watched his videos?

Entertaining as he can be, in many of them he comes across as a bumbling fool who doesn't know what he is doing.

He makes more beginner mistakes when it comes to tech than some actual beginners I know.

He's not exactly what I would consider some sort of mastermind of the tech world. He was a sales guy before he got into YouTube, not an engineer or a technician. That's all you need to know about a person really. I've never met a sales guy who knew shit about shit.
Click to expand...
He is just the face and presenter of the company. He has entire teams dedicated to writing and reviewing products. He is running a company of over 100 employees. I am sure he is pretty busy to know every detail about every piece of tech. If you actually watch more then 2 mins of a random video you would see how enthusiastic he is about tech and wants to make a real change in how products are reviewed. The new lab he is build should be huge for consumers once it is up and running fully. He is not just a salesman.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'd imagine if you are a high profile channel, it's just a matter of reaching out to Google, and they push the magic reset button, and all is back to normal.

It's not as if Google actually ever deletes anything.
Click to expand...

Google does purge deleted youtube videos eventually. It takes several months for them to age out of backups, it can take longer than that period to recover an account that was hacked and used to host copyrighted movies for a few hours until being locked for getting zillion DMCA strikes. Hopefully cleaning up after crypto scammers won't take as long.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top