At the moment with the high increase of YouTube usage, especially from Children, hackers are targeting the comment section and leaving fake comments and phishing links that look enticing and innocent to interact with.
The most serious one that’s allegedly been happening is with Mr Beast. A very popular YouTube Channel with over 34M Subscribers, is getting spammed with fake giveaway links in the comment section from a bot accounts called “Mr Beasts Giveaways”. Some of the phishing links lead to form filling websites but some are also leading to sites where you have to log into the website via your YouTube/Google Account. The logging into the website via YouTube/Google Account is allowing the hackers who own the website to fully take control of your account and lock you out as “Account Access” is listed as one of the permissions and allegedly a bug in the coding is been exploited.
A YouTube and Google account for a lot of people are the same thing so this means they could further target more of your devices and even access certain banking or payment gateways on your account if you use Google services elsewhere or use Android devices.
The “Wanna be friends” and “Hi” comments are targeting the comment section to seek interaction with the videos uploader. A seemingly innocent and simple comment is allegedly leading to a similar case where email addresses are been collected due to many accounts email addresses are publicly available and force attacks are then generated to try get access to the accounts.
If you are worried that your account may have been targeted you can check to see what third party log in and account access has been granted. Follow this link to Googles help page for more: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3466521
Found on Children and Adult YouTube channels alike it is really important that you try to minimise the risk of interaction to these comments. Especially Children who may be led into the fake giveaway links thinking that these are from the actual YouTubers they watch.
At current moment in time this is something that YouTube is investigating and more details are been released. This article will stay up to date and be continuously updated with anything new in regards to this story.
