FAP TV YouTube channel hacked, playing fraudulent content

On the morning of May 28, the FAP TV channel was suddenly renamed Tesla US. On this channel appeared a live broadcast video, replaying the talk of Elon Musk, CEO of electric car company Tesla and Jack Dorsey, founder of the social network Twitter. This talk will take place from July 2021 within the framework of The B Word, an online event about the applications of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

At about 10 o’clock on the same day, the above video was removed from FAP TV. The old logo of this YouTube channel has also reappeared. However, the channel name is currently still Tesla US.

Then another live video with similar content appeared on the FAP TV channel. Besides the talk, the attacker also inserted the content of Elon giving cryptocurrency on the fake Tesla-drops.org website.

When entering this page, users will see billboards with the content: Elon Musk gives 1 million USD digital currency; Users only need to send an amount of Bitcoin or Ethereum to the program’s wallet address and they will receive double back. However, this is just a trick to appropriate users’ digital assets.

At its peak, more than 10,000 people watched the fake live. Attackers turn off the video’s commenting feature to avoid users reporting deceptive content. Currently, a series of old videos in private mode of FAP TV are also public on YouTube.

Talk to ZingTran Long, a representative of FAP TV, said the channel was hijacked by hackers on the morning of May 28. Currently, Mr. Long’s side and the MeTub support unit are working together to get the channel back soon. “Many channels in Vietnam have also encountered this situation. The MeTub side reported that it took about 24 hours to get the channel back.” Mr. Long said.

FAP TV is currently the 3rd largest YouTube channel in Vietnam with more than 13 million subscribers. The main content on the channel is comedy videos, school movies with millions of views.

This is not the first time a major YouTube channel in Vietnam has been attacked in this way. On the morning of August 25, 2021, the YouTube channel of Thanh Nien newspaper was renamed to Ripple Global as well as the entire video title on the channel changed to digital currency advertising content. Specifically, all videos on the channel are titled “Ripple XRP. Market Cycle Tops, Janet B. Corruption | XDC, XRP +31% SEC, XRP Utility.”

On the same day, Thanh Nien Newspaper channel was also appropriated by the object of the right to live and livestream advertising digital currency. In addition, many old videos that were made private by the channel are also made public. After that, Thanh Nien’s YouTube channel was locked with the message “violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines”.

The same incident also happened to the channel of artists such as Ho Quang Hieu, Tran Thanh, Ly Hai, Lynk Lee, Phuc Du… Most of the above cases were restored after a while. But the situation of YouTube channels being abused in this form began to appear from 2020, so far, the platform has not been overcome.