July 1 (Portaltic/EP) –
The Cibercriminals They closely monitor the steps of content creators to get their accounts on platforms like Twitch and YouTube, where they sometimes fail to activate the most important security controls when it comes to keeping their content safe from malicious attacks.
In the middle of this month, the theft of the account of Ibai Llanos, the popular ‘streamer’ who, despite using Twitch as his main platform, has 10.5 million subscribers in the Google service and in which he had multiple videos published since the beginning of his channeldating from 2015.
Once they took over the channel, the cybercriminals replaced its content from the Tesla electric car brand, as well as videos in which the CEO of this firm, Elon Musk, appeared, dealing with the issue of cryptocurrencies.
Something similar happened to another popular ‘blogger’, Linus Tech, who stopped having access to his three YouTube channels after being the victim of an attack called ‘pass-the-cookie’, a very common method to address ‘youtubers’as Kaspersky points out in its Blog.
The cybersecurity firm insists that it is the most popular channels that are hacked to demand a ransom in exchange for their return or to gain access to their audience. While these are under their control, by the way, cybercriminals run unique cryptocurrency promotions and ask victims for transfers to their wallets under the promise that they will receive double compensation for it.
With this, the researchers have observed that scammers often place restrictions on the chat, such as that only users who have been subscribers to the channel for more years can post comments.
Channel theft can mean huge losses for these ‘streamers’, who stop monetizing their content during the time that your channel remains intervenedin addition to the fact that their control also depends on the type of account they have.
This is because, once it detects problems in the channel, YouTube blocks the transmission for violating the community guidelines and it is the owner who must prove that no fraudulent links have been issued or videos against their guidelines voluntarily. This is not usually the case in the case of popular ‘streamers’, such as Linus Tech or Ibai Llanos, who have a media reach.
PROTECT YOUR YOUTUBE ACCOUNT
The use of ‘malware’ that infiltrates the victim’s device is one of the reasons why YouTube account theft usually occurs, as well as the getting exact copies of ChromeEdge and other browsers, including so-called login ‘tokens’ for all websites the user would have connected to.
Although there may be exceptional cases such as Ibai or Linus, YouTube recommends taking a series of measures to protect these profiles on the streaming content platform as much as possible.
First of all, insists in what, from November 1, 2021, Creators who monetize their content must turn on 2-Step Verification for the Google Account they use for their YouTube channel in order to access YouTube Studio or YouTube Studio Content Manager.
Once this information is taken into account, users must create a strong password, using at least eight characters and any combination of letters, numbers and symbols. It doesn’t hurt to activate Chrome’s Password Protection Alert, thanks to which you receive notifications when passwords are entered on non-Google websites.
This measure is useful when, for example, cybercriminals They pass off a fraudulent website as a legitimate one. In this case, Google sends an alert so that the user can stop their action and change their YouTube account password.
It is also important to perform regular security reviews, adding or updating account recovery options, uninstalling applications downloaded from unofficial stores -that is, not from Google Play- and making a backup of the account.
In closing, Google recommends setting up and checking channel permissionsto know the differences between the control that administrators have -who can add or remove users and edit channel details-, editors -who can change channel details- and readers -who can access this information, but not modify it-.
PROTECT BREAKED ACCOUNTS
For protect a compromised Google account, YouTube advises to log in and, if unable to do so, access account recovery page and answer the questions that Google proposes to regain control of them.
Afterwards, it is convenient to review the activity of the account and indicate those actions that have been authorized and those that have not, as well as the devices that are currently logged in with that email.
Finally, more security measures should be applied, such as two-step verification, installing a more secure browser, running antivirus software, and protecting other Google products, such as Gmail, Chrome, Drive, Photos and access to the location.
