Famous Youtube content creator “Linus Tech Tips” has had his Youtube channel taken offline today after an apparent cyber security incident. For a while, the channel was broadcasting what appears to be crypto scam content and forwarding it to a Tesla Youtube channel.
Whilst compromises are far too common in this day and age, the Linus Tech Tips channel at the moment appears to be completely down, with a message stating that “This account has been terminated for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.”
For a while, the channel was renamed to LinusTechTipsTemp in what appears to be an attempt to regain control, but for now, all content on the channel has disappeared. This may end up being a disaster for the subscription numbers for the channel as many Reddit users have stated they thought at first they had accidentally subscribed to a Tesla channel and then went to unsubscribe. It could also cause a knock-on effect on the behind-the-scenes algorithms used by Youtube.
It appears to be the same attack vector used on other channels and news outlets recently. A post from Linus on Floatplane suggests the situation is now under control
“Regarding the YouTube channel hack, we are on top of it with Google’s team now. Everything should be locked down and we are getting to the bottom of the attack vector with the (hopeful) goal of hardening their security around YouTube accounts and preventing this sort of thing from happening to anyone in the future.
You can expect a more detailed update on WAN Show at some point in the future. Not sure if it’ll happen this week since this is still a developing situation.
Nobody knows for now how long the channel will be down, or what the knock-on impact will be for Linus and his team. It will certainly make for an interesting topic of conversation on Linus’s “The WAN Show”.
These types of attacks have been around for a while and although the precise attack vector used in this particular incident is currently unconfirmed, Linus Tech Tips is the latest victim to fall foul of being breached. Previous similar incidents have happened to The British Army, Lil Nas X, and Taylor Swift.
As it stands, the channel is currently unavailable alongside its sister channels Techquickie and TechLinked. It is highly likely that YouTube is working behind the scenes to restore content but this can be a time-consuming process.
For our readers, this highlights the importance of cyber security. Always make sure you have two-factor authentication enabled on all services where possible and if in doubt, do not click on suspicious emails or files. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Always ensure you have an offline copy of any important files and that your restore process is tried and tested.
Best wishes go out to the team at Linus Tech Tips, we hope the recovery is swift and the damage is limited.
