• The Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel, with over 15 million subscribers, has been hijacked by a malicious actor promoting a cryptocurrency scam
• The attacker used a recording from a 2021 session of The B Word conference featuring Cathie Wood, Jack Dorsey, and Elon Musk to promote the scam
• The channel handle was changed to @teslaliveonline1, and all videos older than seven years old have been deleted or made private

Linus Tech Tips, a popular YouTube channel with over 15 million subscribers, has been hijacked by a malicious actor using it to promote a cryptocurrency scam. The attackers reportedly used a recording from a 2021 session of The ₿ Word conference featuring Cathie Wood, Jack Dorsey, and Elon Musk to promote the scam.

The fake channel promised people crypto returns worth more than a billion rands

The scam involves a QR code and URL directing viewers to a Tesla-branded website that claims to give away crypto worth $100 million (R1,842,290,000.00). The attacker changed the channel handle from @LinusTechTips to @teslaliveonline1, and all videos newer than seven years old have either been deleted or made private.

As of the time of writing, the channel handle has been altered to @temporaryhandle, while the channel name has been updated to LinusTechTipsTemp

Linus Tech tip has not commented on the crypto scam hack yet.

According to MyBroadband, Linus Tech Tips was created by Linus Sebastian in November 2008 and later became part of the Linus Media Group. The company, headquartered in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Crypto-linked bank failures fuel regulation debate

In crypto-related stories, Briefly News reported on the global cryptocurrency industry being slammed by setbacks, scandals and high-profile failures in recent months, sparking a regulatory rush to protect consumers from fraud and scams.

Global finance was rocked by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last week, and the digital currency sector was hit hard by the demise of US crypto lenders Silvergate and Signature -- just months after the bankruptcy of troubled crypto exchange trading platform FTX.