The younger artist, Keyshawn Butler, confirmed on his Instagram web page that his YouTube web page had been hacked on 7 January, though he appeared unaware what the channel was getting used for. HiiiKey’s channel has round 249,000 subscribers on YouTube.
American rapper HiiiKey’s YouTube channel has reportedly been hacked and used to advertise a faux Bitcoin and Ethereum giveaway that has stolen over $70,000 from unwitting customers. The stream has been energetic for over 7 hours and continues to be stay as of press time.
Supply: hiiikey, Instagram.
After gaining management of his channel, the hackers then utterly modified the format of the YouTube web page and renamed it to [Ethereum FUND] earlier than eradicating all different movies on the web page. The perpetrators failed to vary the main points of the ABOUT tab of the channel, which nonetheless has HiiiKey’s data and hyperlinks to social media accounts.
The hackers then used the web page to add a livestream on January 7 that was selling an elaborate Ethereum and Bitcoin giveaway. Given the massive quantity of subscribers to the channel, there are apparently over 56,000 viewers watching the stream stay.
The livestream used an outdated video of Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin speaking concerning the launch of the Beacon Chain and the transition to Ethereum 2.0 earlier than December 2020. The video was overlaid with textual content selling a giveaway of 40,000 ETH and three,000 BTC by a faux web site.
Customers have been then provided various returns by the giveaway, which required ETH or BTC to be despatched to particular addresses. Entrants have been promised to obtain double the quantity of cryptocurrency that they despatched to the addresses.
A fast search of the ETH tackle given on the web site reveals that the hackers have obtained a complete of 39.1 ETH price round $47,260 at press time. The BTC tackle has obtained simply over 0.6 BTC which is at the moment round $22,000.
There had been no point out of any giveaways on the official Ethereum Twitter account, or that of Vitalik Buterin. Cointelegraph has additionally reached out to HiiiKey for remark and has not obtained a reply on the time of publication.
This isn’t the primary time {that a} high-profile YouTuber’s account has been compromised and used to advertise faux cryptocurrency giveaways. In August 2020, hackers gained management of expertise reviewer Jon Prosser’s channel and rebranded the web page to NASA information.
The attackers used a video of Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk to advertise a BTC giveaway rip-off. Pretend SpaceX channels netted scammers over $150,000 price of BTC in 2020.
YouTube’s authorized staff has beforehand indicated that the platform can’t be held accountable for cryptocurrency scams carried out on channels. This was in response to a lawsuit instituted by Ripple in April 2020 over the quantity of rip-off pages impersonating the corporate and the XRP token.
