YouTube Accounts Under Siege: Indian Comic Among Victims Of Tesla-Inspired Hacks

This story was originally published on the Benzinga India Portal.

Hackers recently breached the official YouTube channel of comedian and popular internet personality Tanmay Bhat, renaming it “Tesla Corp” and deleting the videos on his channel.

What Happened? Bhat informed via Twitter that the cyberattack compromised his YouTube and Gmail accounts, bypassing two-factor authentication. He urgently sought help from Google and YouTube.

The hackers initiated a private live stream video on Bhat’s channel, prompting him to urge Alphabet Inc GOOGL GOOG YouTube to take action.

This wasn’t an isolated attack. Other popular YouTubers like stand-up comedians Aishwarya Mohanraj and Abdu Rozik experienced similar hacking incidents. Hackers seized control of their accounts, altering the channel names to “Tesla,” swapping display pictures with Tesla’s logo, and replacing cover photos with images of Tesla cars.

They also live-streamed content from these accounts titled: “Tesla Unveils the All-New Model S Plaid 2024 Today! Live Coverage with Elon Musk!”

Most of these hacked YouTube accounts remain unrecovered. In some cases, the hackers entirely deleted videos, while they set 473 videos on Bhat’s channel to private status currently.

In a related incident, hackers deleted all videos from journalist Barkha Dutt’s YouTube channel, “Mojo Story.” Dutt voiced her disappointment on Twitter. That said, all videos have since been restored to the channel.

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