Gung-Ho YT Channel about military videos hacked.

[Rudel_chw]

Hi,

 

Just tought that the experience of this YT channel owner may help others to be super cautious:

 

"Dec 23, 2022

Yes it was. My YouTube channel Gung Ho Vids was hijacked by Russian hackers. After a week of working with Google and YouTube support, I now have my YT channel/Google account firmly in my hands and under control. It will take me a few days to make my channel look like it was before the hacking incident. I'm on the job.

 

The details: I fell for an email phishing scheme from Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia. At the time I didn't know that, but they are very clever. I clicked on a link in a sponsorship offer email, a RAR file was downloaded on my computer, and like an idiot, I opened it. My stupidity delivered my Google account/YouTube channel to them. They entered my account with hacker tools and changed all my login details and recovery options. I was locked out of my YouTube channel. Then the hacker started to upload crypto-currency spam videos with Elon Musk's face as thumbnails. Same thumbnail on every upload.

 

I was wild, tearing my hair out. 8 years of building this channel up, with more than 3000 vids uploaded and almost 2M subscribers... all going down the drain now. So I Googled and Googled. Finally I landed on a YT video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRZzA... from @DreamCanada. He was describing on his video almost exactly what I was going though. I watched the video probably 4-5 times. I followed his steps, and after contacting TeamYouTube on Twitter, Google and YouTube support stepped in to help me. It was a long week, waiting for emails from support.

 

But almost one week from the day of the break-in, I got the golden email from support. My YouTube channel is reinstated. And I get to keep all the revenue generated by Hacker's uploads. Karma."

 

Moral: Be super careful ...