YouTube creators hit by account hijacks

San Francisco: YouTube creators, particularly in the auto-tuning and car review community, have become target of a massive wave of account hijacks, a media report said.

The account hacks are the result of a coordinated campaign where hackers use phishing emails to lure victims on fake Google login pages from where they collect users' account credentials, an investigation by ZDNet found.

The attacks appear to have affected creators from India as well, as Twitter is flooded with complaints about missing channels from YouTube.

"I am a subscriber & also a big fan of his work #Musafirakajoshi and Somebody hacked my brother Rahul joshi's YouTube channel #Musafirakajoshi @YouTubeIndia Please get in touch with him as soon as possible.

@YouTubeIndia and bring his channel back as soon," wrote one Twitter user. "The recent phishing attacks on YouTube are an escalation of a classic scheme, in which users are lured to fake login pages, where they enter legitimate credentials.

Cybercriminals are always looking for the weakest link in the cybersecurity protecting valuable assets; in this case, it was users," Jonathan Knudsen, Senior Security Strategist at Synopsys Integrity Group.