'Linus Tech Tips' Was Hacked And Used To Stream Bitcoin Scam Using Elon Musk At The Frontline

“Linus Tech Tips,” a popular tech channel hosted by Linus Gabriel Sebastian on Alphabet Inc.‘s GOOG GOOGL YouTube with 15.3 million subscribers, was hacked last night. 

What Happened: On Friday, “Linus Tech Tips” posted a video on YouTube (after getting their account back online) titled “My Channel Was Deleted Last Night.” 

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In the video, the YouTuber talked about how “Linus Tech Tips” was deleted, TechLinked was toasted and Techquikie was gone — this kind of attack has become common on YouTube. 

The YouTuber said, “The fireworks started a little after 3 in the morning when the Linus Tech Tips account was renamed Tesla and started streaming a podcast-style recording of self-proclaimed Technoking Elon Musk discussing cryptocurrency.” 

The stream was linked to a “scam website that claimed that for every one Bitcoin you sent, they would return double complete with fake transaction records other users definitely getting huge payouts.”  

The YouTuber went through multiple steps to outmaneuver hackers but to no avail. Linus Tech Tips, TechLinked and Techquikie were used to “host these Elon Musk crypto streams” for a couple of hours until YouTube nuked them.  

All three channels are now online. 

Watch the video here: 

At the time of writing, the video had been viewed more than 350K times. 

A YouTube spokesperson responded to Benzinga's request for comment, saying, “After being alerted by the Linus Tech Tips team that their account was compromised due to unauthorized access, our team investigated the issue and worked with them to secure and restore their account.” 

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