Comedian Tanmay Bhat, Other YouTubers Claim Accounts Hacked. Details Here

Comedian Tanmay Bhat has posted a tweet saying that his YouTube and Gmail accounts have been hacked and the two-factor authentication breached. Mr Bhat's channel has 4.4 million subscribers and it has been renamed 'Tesla Corp'. He tagged YouTube in his tweet seeking urgent help. Mr Bhat is the latest victim of the cyber-attack that has targeted a number of other users, like comedian Aishwarya Mohanraj and YouTuber Abdu Rozik. All these accounts have been taken over by hackers in the last few weeks.

"@YouTube @Google @YouTubeIndia hi guys - my YouTube / gmail account has been hacked. 2FA by passed. Need help urgently. Pls DM!" the stand-up comedian tweeted.

@YouTube @Google @YouTubeIndia hi guys - my YouTube / gmail account has been hacked. 2FA by passed. Need help urgently. Pls DM!

— Tanmay Bhat (@thetanmay) June 4, 2023

A few hours ago, comedian Aishwarya Mohanraj also tweeted that her Gmail account has been compromised and she has lost access to her YouTube account. Ms Mohanraj also sought help from YouTube.

@TeamYouTube hello my gmail account has been hacked and I have lost access to my YouTube channel as well can you pls help?

— Aishwarya Mohanraj (@AishwaryaMrj) June 4, 2023

The company has been responding to all the affected users, asking for a few details and connecting them with specialist teams.

The reason for the alleged hacking is not known and no official statement has been issued by YouTube. But many Twitter users are claiming that hackers are spreading a Tesla scam through the attacks.

In March this year, The Verge reported that Linus Sebastian from Linus Tech Tips also faced a similar attack. All the videos of his channel were taken down, account details were altered and clips of Tesla chief Elon Musk talking about cryptocurrency live-streamed, the outlet further said.

A month before that, the official Twitter account of Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress was hacked and its profile name and picture changed.

The profile name was changed to "Yuga Labs", which reportedly was the name of a crypto company.

In 2020, Twitter handles of several prominent persons in the US were targeted by hackers. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kanye West were among those who were targeted in the mass hack and tweets requesting donations in cryptocurrency were posted from their accounts.

Twitter had then said it was a "co-ordinated" attack targeting its employees "with access to internal systems and tools".