YouTube confirms massive hack attack on creators
- 5 years ago
YOUTUBE — Some of YouTube's biggest creators were hit with a massive wave of account hijacks, especially those in the auto-tuning and car review community.
According to ZDNet, a bunch of big name car-related accounts were affected like Built, Troy Sowers, MaxtCheckVids, PURE Function and Musafir.
ZDNet reported that other creators also said their accounts had been hijacked last week, particularly over the weekend.
The account hacks appear to be coordinated and consisted of messages tricking creators to phishing sites, where hackers logged account credentials.
Hackers then used this information to access Google accounts were they would re-assign popular channels to new owners.
The hackers then changed the channel's vanity URL, giving the original creator and his or her followers the impression that their account had been deleted.
The computer culprits were also able to bypass two-factor authentication on some accounts.
So what can the 23 million YouTube creators out there do to keep themselves safe from the next attack? Easy, just make videos no one really wants to watch. You know—like TomoNews.
According to ZDNet, a bunch of big name car-related accounts were affected like Built, Troy Sowers, MaxtCheckVids, PURE Function and Musafir.
ZDNet reported that other creators also said their accounts had been hijacked last week, particularly over the weekend.
The account hacks appear to be coordinated and consisted of messages tricking creators to phishing sites, where hackers logged account credentials.
Hackers then used this information to access Google accounts were they would re-assign popular channels to new owners.
The hackers then changed the channel's vanity URL, giving the original creator and his or her followers the impression that their account had been deleted.
The computer culprits were also able to bypass two-factor authentication on some accounts.
So what can the 23 million YouTube creators out there do to keep themselves safe from the next attack? Easy, just make videos no one really wants to watch. You know—like TomoNews.