MarcoStyle's hijacked YouTube page, with a verfied hacker
My first interaction with MarcoStyle was him telling me I was wrong. I dont remember what about Ubisofts The Division we were arguing about specifically, but I heard my name come up in his YouTube video about how I had the wrong take on some issue or another in a recent article. Probably the Dark Zone, if I had to guess.
Three years later, the now 24 year-old Marco has grown his gaming channel substantially. Still probably best known for his Division content, hes also branched into Destiny as of late, and his YouTube channel has swelled to 350,000 subscribers.
And he almost lost it all in an instant.
Marco watched everything hed built burn starting on November 2 when he replied to an email looking to advertise on his channel. It seemed like a real company and a standard offer for a channel of his size, but when he clicked a link for the product, an installer buried itself on his computer.
He immediately knew what was happening. He cut power to his PC, did a fresh Windows install and changed all his login info. But it was already too late.
The hacker got into his computer, got into his Google account bypassing two-factor authentication and extracted his YouTube account from his Gmail. He also lost his Twitch, but was able to regain control of it manually fairly quickly.
As soon as Marco lost control of his channel, he contacted YouTube, who did reply that day at least acknowledging the issue. But at that point, the hacker was still in constant motion.
Marcos channel was sold on a Russian website for hacked YouTube channels, which is a thing that exists in 2019. All his videos were taken down. His profile was changed to read Brad Garlinghouse, with the name and picture of the real-life CEO of fintech company Ripple.
Five days later, YouTube still had not blocked the hackers access or let Marco know what was happening, and on November 7, the hacker started running a livestream meant to scam viewers out of money. By the time the stream was over, it reportedly stole about $15,000 from viewers Ripple wallets, and it turns out this Brad Garlinghouse takeover of larger channels is actually a fairly frequent occurrence. That scam stream was now the only video on Marcos entire channel, which had been torn away from him completely.
Other "Brad Garlinghouses" that have seemingly taken over existing channels.
I know that I'm not on the top of the list when it comes to channel size, Marco told me, so I accepted that it would probably take more time for things to get sorted. But when there was a scam going on, on my channel that did not get taken down for 24 hours, I got pretty stressed out. 'What if my viewers think it's me and get scammed?' 'What if those viewers go to the police and report that a channel called 'marcostyle' scammed them?' 'How can YouTube remove videos far quicker for far less, while an illegal scam with 1000s of reports is allowed to stay up?'
The hack and scam wasnt even the strangest part of the entire ordeal. Rather, the most baffling moment came when Brad Garlinghouse, the clearly fake identity of a clearly hacked YouTube channel, actually managed to earn a verification badge from YouTube, something Marco had attempted to get for ages, but never was given.
Marco's actual channel
Marco documented the entire unfolding saga on Twitter where it attracted the attention of fellow YouTubers of various sizes from Gladd to Datto to Keemstar. Eventually, it caught the eye of Ryan Fwiz Wyatt, Global Head of Gaming at YouTube, and an actual end finally started to feel like it was forthcoming on November 9 with YouTube getting back in touch and appearing to prioritize a fix. It took until yesterday, November 13, for MarcoStyle to get control of his channel again and see his videos restored, 11 days after the hack had started. Its not clear how long it might have taken if Marco had a smaller channel or if others hadnt started making noise about it on social media. But it was nearly an utter catastrophe for a content creator where everything hed spent years building could seemingly be wiped out from one simple click.
I've thought a lot about how my YouTube career could come to an end at one point, Marco said. Maybe the game I'd play simply wouldn't have a big enough audience, maybe I'd grow bored of it, or maybe at one point I just fall off because the type of content I make doesn't get pushed through YouTube, and in those cases, I'd sort of be fine with it, because then at least I tried and ended up not being good enough. But to go down like this, where I was about to do better than ever before with my Destiny 2 content and about to blow up (at least I thought so, I could be wrong) and then have my channel get hacked and destroyed, that is just infuriating.
Marco is certainly not the first YouTuber to get hacked, but it was a higher profile case and one that still took a substantial amount of time to be resolved, considering how quickly YouTube often takes action on other channels for various offenses. To get its side of the story, I first spoke with Ryan Wyatt, who referred me to YouTube PR, and I sent them a laundry list of questions regarding how to better protect accounts and report hijackings, but also about why this wasnt flagged when the hacker was carving through the channel, why it took so long to regain control of and fix the account, and how on earth the hacker managed to actually get verified as all this was happening.
YouTube sent me back only the following statement the day Marcos channel was restored:
We take account security very seriously and regularly notify users when we detect suspicious activity. We encourage users to enable two-factor authentication as part of Google's account Security Checkup, which decreases the risk of hacking. If a user has reason to believe their account was compromised, they can notify our team to secure the account and regain control. "
This is, in fact, word for word identical to a statement they sent to Forbes over a month ago for a different story we wrote about an increased rise in spear phishing attacks, similar to the one that affected Marco. It is par for the course for YouTube which operates in a black box most of the time. Cryptic answers, if any, with most of the responsibility directed at the user, not the platform that should be helping to protect them.
Marco did get his account back, thats a happy ending at least. Hes relieved and is just happy the ordeal is over, as he expressed in a recent comeback video posted to his channel.
He lost the hackers verified badge.
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A YouTuber With 350,000 Subscribers Was Hacked, YouTube Verified His Hacker - Forbes