On Wednesday night, renowned YouTuber Ranveer Allahbadia faced a major cyberattack that compromised both his YouTube channels. The hackers took over his Beer Biceps channel, renaming it to “Tesla” and altering the handle to “@Elon.trump.tesla_live2024.” Meanwhile, his personal channel’s name was changed to “@Tesla.event.trump_2024.”
In a shocking development, all interviews and podcasts were wiped from both channels, replaced with older event streams featuring high-profile individuals like Elon Musk and Donald Trump. This attack follows a recent hacking incident involving the Supreme Court of India’s YouTube channel, raising concerns about the security of prominent accounts.
The hackers used a livestream featuring an AI-generated avatar of Elon Musk to trick viewers into a cryptocurrency scam. The avatar urged them to invest in cryptocurrency, falsely promising to double their returns if they deposited Bitcoin or Ethereum on a suspicious site, elonweb.net. This tactic, known as a “Bitcoin doubling” scam, is commonly used in cyberattacks targeting popular YouTube accounts.
In response to the hack, YouTube removed both of Allahbadia’s channels, now displaying a message: “This page isn’t available. Sorry about that. Try searching for something else.”
As of now, Ranveer Allahbadia has yet to make an official statement about the breach. His most recent post on X (formerly Twitter) was a short video promoting communal harmony, shared roughly 14 hours before the hack occurred.