Cyptocurrencies do give a high rate of returns, but are equally susceptible to cyber attacks. (Photo Credit: Pixabay) Dozens of crypto YouTubers and Indian cryptocurrency exchanges had their accounts hijacked by cyber criminals on Monday morning. The hackers posted unauthorised videos with text directing viewers to send money to the hacker’s wallet. Some of the compromised YouTube channels include BitBoy Crypto, Altcoin Buzz, Box Mining, Floyd Mayweather, Ivan on Tech, and Indian cryptocurrency exchanges that were affected are CoinDCX, WazirX, and Unocoin among others.
The hacked accounts had a video posted without the creator’s permission that instructed viewers to send “USDT/USDC/BNB/ETH” to a wallet address that was in the description of the video in return for a new cryptocurrency called “OWCY”.
Accounts who appear to have been targeted by the attack include: ‘BitBoy Crypto’, ‘Altcoin Buzz’ among others. (Photo: Twitter/ Box Mining) Michael Gu, the creator behind the YouTube channel “Box mining” took it to Twitter and confirmed that his account was compromised. Gu said that he has two-factor authentication enabled, leading him to believe YouTube is responsible for the hack.
Cryptocurrency exchanges Unocoin, WazirX confirmed to the indianexpress.com that cyber criminals took hold of their account in the early hours of Monday. “We can see that there is no external login or activity on our account. It is obviously appearing as if YouTube has got hacked or should be some rouge employee at their end who could have intentionally did this or it is also possible that his computer was compromised,” Sathvik Vishwanath, CEO of Uncoin said.
Rajagopal Menon, VP Marketing, WazirX told indianexpress.com that there was a systematic hack on several crypto YouTube accounts around the world. “Fortunately, our team caught the fraudulent video within 7 minutes of going live on our channel and deleted it. On conducting a diagnosis, we did not find any security flaw from WazirX’s end that could have given hackers access to our channel,” he said.
Another crypto YouTuber Richard Heart tweeted that his channel had been banned during the middle of a livestream, indicating that YouTube was probably aware of the event.
The exact technique used by the hackers to get hold of the YouTube channels is not known as yet. Explaining the probable cause, independent cyber security researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia told the indianexpress.com that YouTubers uses third-party tools for live streaming, analytics, etc. “These third-party tools ask for some permission through API, which generates a token. Now, there is a chance that hackers were able to reach these tokens and using these API credentials they uploaded the video.”
Indianexpress.com has reached out to YouTube for a comment, this story will be updated if and when YouTube responds.
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