Historic Twitter hack by Bitcoin scammers spreads to Youtube
The recent historic Twitter hack of famous people with millions of follower by a bitcoin scammer was enough to rock the social media world this week, but it is not over and has now spread to Youtube with the exact same skill and modus operandi. All this is leaving the world wondering exactly what is going on here. Is someone with massive power to hack the world’s social media networks now spreading bitcoin propaganda for an ulterior motive or are they simply trying to use that immense hacking power to scam a few dollars of some unsuspecting newcomers to the cryptocurrency industry?
...weak wifi hotspot again not uploading pics
The hacking of top Indian Youtuber Ajey Nagar (aka Carryminati), with his 6.6 million subscribers, is on par with the Twitter hack of two dozen top global celebrities and politicians within the same week. The brazen ingenuity to smash any security defences and infiltrate, so that they were actually in control of Ajay’s Youtube channel is vastly impressive, exactly like the ability they had – if it’s the same ring – to hijack the 24 Twitter accounts with their many millions of followers between them.
One thing is for sure and that is that regardless of the few hundred thousand dollars scammed so far from the Twitter hack– not much by hacking standards – this hacker has set world records for the depth and skill of the hack. The exact same tactic was implemented in Ajay’s Youtube gaming channel, they went in and took over his set up, and simply started streaming live as if they were Ajay himself. Now that is piracy at its best. Live video, asking his viewers to send Bitcoin and Ethereum to the crypto wallet address listed, was the technique, and their choice of this channel was not because he was a celebrity, but rather that he simply had a massive following anyway. In fact this was his smaller channel, the main one having 24 million subscribers.
It was a planned and thought out attack as the hackers streamed some of Ajay’s old charity video uploads from a few years ago but just added their own Bitcoin address to trick viewers. For a few minutes on three successive repeat runs in a short space of time, they showed the Bitcoin request dubbed over Ajay’s old video but curiously also added a video clip of Elon Musk being interviewed, as well as a clip of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin supposedly promising in a post to give away double the ETH sent to him. This is exactly what went down in the Twittter hack, where double your investment was promised.
Any learned crypto enthusiast would immediately spot the scam but newcomers to the crypto space, like some of Ajay’s gaming subscribers may simply not realize and fall for the trap. Now imagine that Ajay had around 20 000 viewers watching the live stream that night, less than usual since it was so late at night there, and even if a small percent of them responded to the request, they could have scooped up a neat sum of BTC or ETH right there and then. However, with all that immense hacking capability, as well as planning and effort, they didn’t really seem to care too much about their less-than-polished delivery of Bitcoin bait. I mean it wasn’t really relevant content to the Indian gamers channel at all and could have been couched in more appropriate terms, perhaps revolving more directly around gaming.
All of this leads some analysts to suspect that the ultimate motive for the hack was not really to scam lots of money off people but more to start a viral interest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency as a topic of interest, especially now, just as the next bull run is about to ensue, taking the Bitcoin price up to stratospheric new all time high (ATH) prices. We may never know their motives for sure but one curious fact was that just after the hacked stream’s on Ajay’s channel went live, Google searches for Bitcoin and Ethereum saw a massive spike for a few hours, at one point over 4x or a 400% uptick.
Youtube eventually restored Ajay’s channel back to the gamer and some Indian bitcoin exchanges actually blocked the hacker’s wallet address form depositing onto their exchanges, so there are ways to resolve these incidents it seems. Yet it’s not the end of the story for Youtube as they are now being sued by Steve Wozniac co-founder of Apple, of all people, for this very issue of allowing hackers to impersonate famous people to scam bitcoin through fake adds. Add to the list of people suing Youtube the CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, for a similar issue and you can see how prolific this current hacking trend has become.
Ultimately it looks as if some extremely skilled and therefore powerful unknown entities are able to cause mayhem with the legacy social media platforms at will and although they may be easily swatted away and not make off with much, still they are making huge waves on the social media platforms as well as sending viral messages alerting people to Bitcoin and Ethereum. Some may see this as initially a tarnish to the reputation of the cryptocurrency industry, but in the long run it is forcing attention upon crypto. It may urge regulators to step up their game and take a firmer position on the crypto industry, and that may be a good thing in the long run.
If new and interested investors see that they are protected and that the crypto space is safe for them to invest, then they will be more inspired to part with their fiat for Bitcoin or Ethereum. And with their respective price pumps in the past 24 hours, it looks like the bull run is about to awaken from its slumber for another two years of climbing that stairway to the Moon. If there was ever a time to invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum and indeed numerous of the fledgling altcoins, then it’s now. So whoever the ninja hackers are, they may have achieved their aims much more than we realize.
Ref: https://thedailychain.com/top-indian-youtuber-carryminati-hacked-by-bitcoin-and-ethereum-scammers/
(image pixabay)
