YouTube restores access after scammers hijacked Ranveer Allahbadia’s channel
Two YouTube channels of content creator Ranveer Allahbadia (aka BeerBiceps) were hacked by miscreants promoting crypto fraud. Allahbadia hosts interactive sessions with Indian celebrities, spiritual leaders and politicians, with a combined subscriber base of over 12 million. According to the creator, after the account breach, both of his channels were inaccessible to him. Meanwhile, the cybercriminals replaced the related logos and images with those of Elon Musk and Tesla, and deleted all videos published on the channels. The scammers soon also began promoting a crypto fraud scheme, using Allahbadia’s account.
YouTube has since restored access to Allahbadia’s channels following the breach. Meanwhile, the hackers managed to display crypto schemes to entice viewers with promises of 200 percent returns. The hacker soon started a livestream on Allahbadia’s YouTube channels, with photos of Musk and Donald Trump. A QR code was displayed on the screen, which when scanned took users to a fake Tesla-inspired website. This website also featured a giveaway worth $100 million (approximately Rs. 836 million) for the participants, a report by Crypto.news said.
Crypto scammers are using more sophisticated methods to take advantage of unwitting users, the FBI said in a recent report. Also in this incident, the hacker showed off a calculator that allowed users to check how much they would receive in return if they invested a certain amount in what appeared to be a donation to Trump’s presidential campaign.
“We welcome you to Elon Musk and Trump’s official event. This event was created to popularize cryptocurrency. To participate you must send cryptocurrency to any wallet (BTC, ETH, DOGE, SOL) you see on the site, we will multiply the amount sent by two and return it to your wallet,” read a message that appears on the fake site created by hackers.
Subscribers noticed the suspicious activities on Allahbadia’s channels and got to work post about this on X (formerly Twitter).
According to the Crypto.news report, streams from one of Allabadia’s hacked channels had crossed the 149,000 mark at one point, indicating that several people could have been at risk of being scammed.
It is not the first time such an incident has occurred. Earlier this month, YouTube was spammed with deep-fake videos from Apple CEO Tim Cook promoting crypto fraud.
