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We also spoke with L.L., a Polish gamer who managed to build a channel of more than 12k followers. Soon after, she dropped her attempts at forging a career as a vlogger, unwilling to start from scratch with a new account. never regained control over her YouTube account, which had amassed roughly 1k followers by that point. Instead, she had her YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram accounts taken from her.
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She was approached and asked to install an app to connect to an ad agency’s backend in preparation for a future collaboration. In December 2019, a Romanian fashion vlogger who we’ll reference only by her initials F.A. Hacked accounts sold on Trade Groups even to this dayīut independently from Google TAG, this reporter has also followed these attacks since November 2019, and after a flood of complaints on Google’s support forum suggested that the incident described in the tweet was not an isolated case. With the victims locked out of their accounts, the hackers would typically sell the hijacked YouTube channel on underground marketplaces for stolen identities. The hackers would then use the authentication cookies to access a YouTuber’s account -bypassing the need to enter a two-factor authentication (2FA) token- and move to change passwords and the account’s recovery email and phone numbers. Once the YouTube creators received and installed the demo app, the installer would drop malware on their devices, malware which would extract login credentials and authentication cookies from their browsers and send the stolen data to a remote server.
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Victims were asked to install and test various applications and then publish a review.Īpps typically used in these schemes involved antivirus software, VPN clients, music players, photo editors, PC optimizers, or online games.īut unbeknownst to the targets, the hackers hid malware inside the apps. YouTubers were typically lured with potential sponsorship deals. TAG said the hackers operated by reaching out to victims via email with various types of business opportunities. In a report published today, the Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG) attributed these incidents to “ a group of hackers recruited in a Russian-speaking forum.”
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Youtube creators were tricked with offers for business collaborations.More than 4,000 YouTube accounts hijacked in two-year-old phishing campaign.Google unmasks two-year-old phishing & malware campaign targeting YouTube users
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