5 YouTube Hacked Accounts: Attackers Love For Tesla and Elon Musk Surprisingly, the attackers renamed the hacked accounts after Elon Musk and his company Tesla
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On Thursday, Indian famous YouTuber Ranveer Allahbadia's YouTube account 'BeerBiceps' was reported to have been hacked. The hacker not only took over the account but also changed the user name and deleted all his podcasts.
Surprisingly, the attacker renamed the hacked account after Elon Musk and his company Tesla as "@Elon.trump.teslalive2024" and "@Tesla.event.trump2024." Nevertheless, it's not the first time a famous YouTuber experienced a cyberattack. There have been several incidents where YouTube accounts have been hacked. Apart from Allahbadia's account here the four hacked account cases:
Carryminati, 2020
One of the most famous YouTuber Carryminati aka Ajey Nagar's gaming channel, 'CarryIsLive'witnessed the same cyber hack scenario in 2020. In a very unusual scenario, an anonymous hacker was asking for bitcoins while playing a video with the topic 'Charity Stream: Help Assam & Bihar'.
In the same timeline several political and corporate leaders' Twitter (now X) accounts including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Bill Gateswere were hacked.
Tanmay Bhat, 2023
Another famous Indian YouTuber, comedian, actor and producer, Tanmay Bhat also met the same fate in 2023—his account and videos were deleted and renamed as Tesla Corp.
In his case, both his YouTube and Gmail accounts were hacked which increased the vulnerability of his credentials. Additionally, he shared on social media, he uses two-factor authentication. Bad actors were able to bypass it, indicating increasing sophistication of cyberattack.
Barkha Dutt, 2023
A surprising hack which took place was of Barkha Dutt's YouTube channel, 'Mojo Story', in 2023. Dutt is a famous Indian Journalist and Author. After working with several media houses as a TV journalist, she started her YouTube independent channel in 2017. In the cyber hack all her videos were deleted. While sharing hacking news on twitter (now X), she wrote, "After hours of urging @TeamYouTube to act and being assured action is being taken, I woke up to find the @themojostory channel content ALL DELETED by the hackers - four years of blood, toil, sweat, tears, 11 thousand videos, COVID work of 3 years, ALL GONE. I am heartbroken," tweeted the journalist.
Linus Tech Tips, 2023
Apart from Indian YouTubers, several famous YouTubers from America, Canada and other countries also faced cyber-hacks. One of them is Canadian tech YouTuber Linus Gabriel Sebastian whose account Linus Tech Tips was hacked in 2023. The account was renamed, and a video of Elon Musk and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey discussing cryptocurrency from The B Word conference, hosted by Ark Invest, was uploaded. His other channels, TechLinked and Techquickie, were also hacked. Techquickie was renamed "Tesla," and live videos of Musk discussing crypto were streamed.
At the time of publication, Ranveer's account has been recovered and all his videos have been restored. Additionally, above all mentioned accounts were recovered.
What You Should Avoid
Whenever you notice unusual activity on your account, it's important to check if your Google account may have been hacked, hijacked, or compromised. Hackers use several methods to gain access to accounts, with malware attacks, phishing attacks, and social engineering being the most common.
To keep your account safe, never share your email address or password with others. Avoid downloading files or software from unknown platforms, and do not click on suspicious links sent via email or SMS.
According to Google, to recover a hacked YouTube channel, "you must first recover the hacked Google Account associated with the YouTube channel." If you experience something like this, you should immediately follow Google's listed steps to recover a hacked account.
