Famed YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has been hacked and destroyed. The gadget review channel with over 15 million subscribers was spewing Elon Musk-themed crypto scams earlier this morning, but now appears to be completely pulled from the platform.
As Dextero reports, Linus Tech Tips was officially hacked as of this morning, with the new puppet master renaming the channel “LinusTechTipsTemp” while also deleting a majority of the original Linus Tech Tips’ videos. The hacked profile was originally live streaming at least videos featuring a thumbnail with Elon Musk. The first was titled “OpenAI ChatGPT-4: The Game-Changing AI Technology” while the other, a reported crypto scam, was titled “LinusTechTips & Elon Musk Special Crypto Giveaway!”
Dextero originally reported that LinusTechTips account was seeing videos (including unlisted content) restored to the channel as of this morning as an act of YouTube, while The Verge reports that the hacker was the one behind restoring the videos. Regardless, youtube.com/user/linustechtips has now seemingly been scrubbed from YouTube completely.
“Yes I know -_-,” the channel’s host Linus Sebastian tweeted this morning.
YouTube and Linus Tech Tips did not immediately return Gizmodo’s request for comment.
The Verge further reports that LinusTechTips is not the first account that has fallen prey to these bad actors pushing crypto streams in a likely attempt to phish users for sensitive data. Channels belonging to Lil Nas X, Drake, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, and even the British Army were hacked last year, the latter of which was also an attempt to promote a crypto scam.
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