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How do scammers overtake a youtube account with 2fa enabled

Saw a video of a youtuber that got his account overtaken which has 2fa enabled (not sure which method but I’m thinking sms). He says he didn’t get phished, downloaded anything and his session cookies weren’t stolen and I believe him. The only clue is that he received a sms otp from google but was invalid when he inputted it which let’s me to believe he relied on SMS for 2fa in the first place. My theory is he reused passwords and his number was overtaken but I’m not sure if that’s the case since he did receive the google otp so that leaves out the common phone rep social engineering methods of porting out and fowarding. What else could it be? My paranoia is kinda acting up

Tldr: A YouTuber’s account was hacked despite having 2FA. While unsure of the exact method, potential factors include relying on SMS OTP and the possibility of password reuse. No session cookies were stolen, nothing downloaded and no links clicked

Edit for timestamp: its kinda difficult since he jumps around a lot but he begins to talk about it around the 2min 30sec mark and stops at around the 6min mark

CaptainBlagbird ,
@CaptainBlagbird@lemmy.world avatar

Non-piped link: youtu.be/8pgvhlelQO4

gravitas_deficiency ,

Off the top of my head:

  • persistent auth cookie hijack
  • MITM SMS attack
intensely_human ,

With SMS I don’t think it’s MITM. If you can reprogram a sim chip (or build a new one) the phone network just sends you a person’s messages.

I think. Haven’t done it myself.

damium ,

There is also SMS passive reading using LEO intercept. Hacked police email accounts are used to gain access to carrier systems where they use “imminent threat” no warrant lookups to pull the SMS in real time.

SMS is a terrible form of 2FA, better than none but not by much.

TORFdot0 , (edited )

If he wasn’t trying to log in then how did he have anywhere to input a 2FA code? If he was trying to log in its possible that his PC was compromised by malware and he got his credentials + 2FA stolen by EvilProxy

Edit: checked out a bit of the video for context. It sure sounds like that it was probably bad 2FA set up. Does Google still support security questions? If he’s had partner for a decade then surely security questions were set up as a second factor. I don’t know if they are still supported though

SomeBoyo ,

IIRC they can steal a login cookie and thereby circumvent 2FA.

Jedi ,
@Jedi@bolha.forum avatar

this is what happened to Linus Tech Tips channel: theverge.com/…/linus-tech-tips-channel-hack-sessi…

Extrasvhx9he OP ,

He did talk about session cookies/tokens in the video which is a possibility but I’m under the impression that this is not what happened since he was already aware of that possibility and didn’t do anything to facilitate that.

candyman337 ,

I believe there is another method where you can intercept an SMS text somehow. I read about it a while back so I don’t know the specifics, but I know that since SMS is unsecure there is a way to grab the data while it’s being sent to you

NoneYa ,

Nothing he’s aware of. I haven’t watched the video, but there’s no way to know for sure that you didn’t do any of that because all it takes is one hit.

Additionally, with exploits like mouse jacking, it’s entirely possible for someone to do things on your computer without your knowledge, even remotely.

bionicjoey ,

I’ve also seen social engineering attacks where they trick a cell phone company into cloning a SIM card

themusicman ,

PSA: SMS 2FA is not secure! Use a hardware key or mobile app instead

rufus , (edited )

Difficult to tell what happened without knowing the full context.

It has happened that scammers call support, say they’re XYZ and lost their 2fa device. 2fa gets disabled and they can overtake the account in some old fashioned way.

Also there is SIM splitting and other techniques. Also the youtuber could be wrong. These attacks are very subtle until it’s too late.

Give us a link (with timestamp if it’s long), maybe someone can find out more. [Edit: Thx for the link.]

Extrasvhx9he OP , (edited )

Damn I assumed google customer reps couldn’t do that without verifying. How do you even protect from that? Besides not using one account for everything

Edit: I assumed porting out scam too but what confuses me about it was that his carrier line was still actively recieveing SMS and my understanding is that after a port out, the old sim becomes invalid/not working.

rufus , (edited )

Sure, customer reps shouldn’t help with account recovery unless they get proper verification. I’m sure many companies have learned from past mistakes. I think that’s the only way to solve it. I’m not sure though if this is what has happened here… These crypto people seem to have hacked many accounts last year.

Maybe related video from Linus Tech Tips incident last march: piped.video/watch?v=yGXaAWbzl5A

Adam Koralik talks a bit fast and some details aren’t clear to me. For example if he got recovery mails and sms from his own actions or if this was the scammer. Also I’m not sure how 2fa works with YouTube. I certainly hope changing the account password makes it ask for the second factor or it’s next to useless. If this is the case he must have gotten phished or there is another unknown security issue in the process. Or his password didn’t get changed in the first place. But that also can’t be it since he clearly tells he got the notification mails for a password change and changed recovery methods.

rufus , (edited )

Concerning your edit: I’ve read that, too. That your connection drops, once a new SIM card gets activated. That might take a while, though, or not happen with some carriers or under certain circumstances. As far as i know a cell network is a crazy mix of technology. And from his description it’s not even clear to me when he talks about SMS and when he talks about notification emails or push notifications.

And in other youtubers’ videos I’ve heard they usually seperate their accounts so that it’s not the same account for private stuff on their phone and the important youtube stuff all mixed in the same account.

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