In the past few days, there have been some attacks targeting prominent crypto YouTubers, Coin Bureau is the latest YouTube channel to be affected despite its implementation of the Two-Factor Authentication or 2FA.
On Monday, Coin Bureau, a major cryptocurrency news source with over 600,000 Twitter followers, faced a security compromise on its Youtube channel.
Before Youtube took down a video with links to fraud fiat/cryptocurrency addresses soliciting a token sale, hackers allegedly uploaded a video with connections to scam fiat/cryptocurrency addresses soliciting a token sale.
The event perplexed Coin Bureau employees, who said their accounts were “protected with ultra-strong passwords and Google security keys.”
This was far from a one-off occurrence. Ivan on Tech and Real Vision Finance, two well-known cryptocurrency YouTubers, have recently had their accounts hacked.
Hackers released a video titled “One World Cryptocurrency” that solicited the same type of token sales across all hacked accounts, indicating that it was a coordinated effort.
Furthermore, despite the widespread use of VPNs, all of the accounts were signed in from an IP address in the Philippines, making it difficult to pinpoint individual login locations.
Seems like it’s happening to other YouTubers at the same time. @Altcoinbuzzio @FloydMayweather Also possibly @IvanOnTech @aantonop (seen by my telegram members). pic.twitter.com/WvknuyL3Px
— Boxmining (@boxmining) January 23, 2022
It’s unknown how much money the hackers made because the fraudulent videos were swiftly taken down by both the creators and Youtube.
However, there have been unsubstantiated allegations of losses from Twitter users. One user, @James86965119, is accused of transferring $1,000 in digital currency to the hacker’s phony addresses.
Furthermore, if the Youtubers’ charges are proven true, it will raise doubts about the effectiveness of Google’s two-factor authentication service. Hackers would theoretically be unable to gain access to a user’s Youtube account unless they had both the password and the security key.
