YouTuber regains control of channel after being hacked to promote XRP scams

Popular YouTuber DidYouKnowGaming has regained access to his channel after it was hacked by an unidentified bad actor and used to promote XRP scams. XRP is one of the most liquid cryptocurrencies with a market cap of over $24.6b as of April 30.

DidYouKnowGaming YouTube channeled hacked

DidYouKnowGaming is a popular channel with over 2.4m subscribers and became a target for hackers on April 28.

After taking over the channel, hackers changed renamed it from DidYouKnowGaming to Ripple before populating other sections with the crypto project’s logo and cover images. This was done to lure and confuse unsuspecting viewers into sending or investing XRP, the native currency of the XRPL, with false promises of superior returns.

The channel’s owners took to Twitter to alert users of the breach. A few hours later, YouTube quickly stepped in to prevent further harm, blocking further access from hackers.

Even so, YouTube didn’t break down how hackers took control of the channel. However, many in the community believe the attempt to scam users is popular and designed to take advantage of new and unaware crypto enthusiasts.

More YouTubers getting hacked

More tech celebrities and influencers, especially with a leaning to crypto, have had their accounts illegally accessed. It calls for more security controls from YouTube to stem the possible proliferation of scams. Such hacks pose a serious risk to cryptocurrency investors, considering the prevalence of deepfakes produced by artificial intelligence (AI) tools. 

Hackers frequently produce deepfakes of well-known business people, such as Elon Musk, to mislead cryptocurrency investors.

With a new deep fakes creation tool recently released by Chinese tech giant, Tencent, users can impersonate anyone for a small fee.