One of Asia’s prominent esports organizers Skyesports, had their YouTube account compromised. The Skyesports channel, which currently is unavailable, has over 500,000 subscribers.
The account credentials, specifically the username was changed to ‘Etherum Foundation,’ a very common new generation YouTube scam that targets high retention accounts.
YouTube Is Simply Ignoring These Hacks
Although this kind of hacking is not new under this group name, Google is yet to explain the exploit. The weird part about this hack is that it’s nothing new. There are dozens of accounts on YouTube lying with Etherum Foundation username, most of them compromised.
Mostly, the way these hack works are via rudimentary social engineering, i.e. tricking a user into giving their personal and confidential details. Perhaps, it’s not clear what was particularly triggered in this case.
At the time of publishing this story, I personally spotted at least 11 live streams under names such as ‘Etherum Live’ ‘Etherum News’ all streaming unusual content.
What happens after the hack
These hackers after taking control of your account, stream objectionable contents which is usually prohibited according to YouTube’s terms of service. In this case, in fact, the hacker is using an escrow name “Etherum Foundation.”
YouTube’s AI and algorithm flags the channel and suspends it indefinitely. The most disturbing part of this scam is that there are dozens of ‘Etherum Foundation’ parody or proxy accounts, defaming the original brand.
A simple search returns with at least a dozen channels with 0 videos but hundreds of thousands of subscribers, casually flaunting the security system.
Accounts with wider reach
Skyesports, which has over half a million subscribers is among the top esports companies in India which have millions of interactions, viewership, and traction.
Just like the Twitter scandal where hundreds of accounts were compromised and turned into an escrow bitcoin account, YouTube hacks of major prominent personalities and organizations are much common.
If at all YouTube can’t figure this out, Google must step in and stop this bandwagon of tricksters making their security look like a child’s play.
