Google has been watching YouTube accounts get hacked for years — is there more the tech giant could do to protect creators? Keep reading below to read about the Linus Tech Tips hack.

Popular YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has been hacked today, March 23, 2023. The channel’s 15.3 million subscribers saw videos for crypto scams instead of tech hardware reviews. It’s the latest breach in a series of hacked high-profile YouTube accounts, with scammers regularly gaining access to prominent accounts to rename them and livestream crypto scam videos.

The main Linus Tech Tips channel was hacked earlier this morning, with several live videos broadcasted before the hacker started making previous private videos public again. YouTube employees eventually suspended the account. Other Linus Media Group YouTube channels, including Techquickie and TechLinked, have also been breached and given new names focused on Tesla.

It’s not clear yet how the channels have been breached, but owner Linus Sebastian tweeted that he was aware of the situation. In a statement posted to Floatplane (a streaming service spun out of Linus Media Group), he said that the company is working on it with Google, and is “getting to the bottom of the attack vector with the (hopeful) goal of hardening their security around YouTube accounts and preventing this sort of thing from happening to anyone in the future.” He also advised discussing additional details on the company’s podcast, though he warned they might not come this week as it’s “still a developing situation.”

Linus Tech Tips fans have noted that almost a decade’s worth of videos was deleted. Sebastian has backed up his old videos using a “Vault” backup system and is an advocate of using the “3-2-1” method of storing data across multiple storage devices (including one offsite).

The Verge reported that Linus Tech Tips is not the first account to have been hacked pushing crypto streams in a likely attempt to phish users for sensitive data. Channels belonging to Lil Nas X, Drake, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, and even the British Army were hacked last year, the latter of which was also an attempt to promote a crypto scam.