Hackers hijacked the Supreme Court of India's YouTube channel this week, after others over the year.
They then deleted previous videos and used the channel to promote XRP.
This promotion involved a deepfake of Brad Garlinghouse, stating that the cryptocurrency would hit $2 soon.
XRP is still in a consolidation phase and could break out soon.
A disturbing new trend has emerged, with hackers taking over video streaming platforms, particularly YouTube—and shilling Ripple’s native cryptocurrency, XRP.
This week in a strange turn of events, the Supreme Court of India’s official YouTube was the latest victim of such attack.
The hackers responsible, simply hijacked the platform and used it to run a fake livestream in which they shilled XRP using a deepfake image of a prominent Ripple executive.
Here are all the details.
The incident occurred on 20 September, when the official YouTube account of India's Supreme Court (which has more than 200,000 subscribers) was broken into.
The hackers behind it all deleted all the previously uploaded videos and then rebranded the channel entirely with Ripple-related content, to seem connected to the company.
One of the videos they posted featured a deepfake video of its CEO, Brad Garlinghouse.
Screenshots of the video that circulated on X showed the executive stating that “XRP would hit a price of $2 by the end of the month”.
In another instance, the channel showed videos of XRP price predictions in a bid to get unsuspecting investors to buy in.
Soon after hijacking the channel, the hackers renamed the YouTube channel, changed its URL, and deleted all the previous content.
Fortunately, YouTube was quick to take action, removing all the new content entirely because it "violated its Community Guidelines".
The recent YouTube hack, like most of the others, was likely a phishing attempt.
Phishing, for context, often involves attackers attempting to lure victims with unrealistic crypto claims, to which they attach malicious links.
Once victims click the links, the websites they lead to, urge them to connect their crypto wallets.
Once they do this, the hackers gain unauthorized access and can siphon off funds automatically.
This incident is not the first time that hackers have pulled a similar stunt.
In fact, earlier in the year, YouTube helped to neutralize a similar attempt to overtake the DidYouKnowGaming channel.
Similar to what they did to the Indian account, the hackers rebranded the channel with Ripple-related content.
Eventually, the original videos were successfully restored after the video streaming service intervened.
In July of this year, the YouTube account of the Filipino band Ben&Ben was also compromised and used to livestream a similar campaign.
Within the same month in another incident, two top South Korean YouTube drama channels (tvN Drama and TVING) were overtaken by the same scammers.
tvN Drama with over 7.11 million subscribers and TVING with over 985,000 subscribers reportedly had their logos, banners and descriptions replaced with Ripple-themed content.
The hackers even managed to change the handle names themselves to XRP-related titles before streaming promotional videos to viewers.
This is without mentioning the dozens of hacks that have become the norm on X (Twitter) with the handles of brands and celebrities being used to shill memecoins.
In a likely related turn of events, XRP's price action has seen a slight -1.2% dent on the daily timeframe, with not much price action on its weekly timeframe.
XRP’s price action
According to the charts, XRP is still struggling with completing its consolidation after breaking out of the descending trendline below:
XRP’s price performance
The charts show that the 25-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) is acting as a strong support, and has been holding the cryptocurrency up since 12 September.
This provides the first layer of dynamic support for the cryptocurrency.
So far, the cryptocurrency is trading above most of its major moving averages, which Is a good sign overall.
The Fibonacci extension tool, however, shows that a significant resistance sits at around $0.5934 as shown.
This indicates that if XRP is unable to clear out this price level, a likely retest of the $0.5528 support is likely to result (which also coincides with the cryptocurrency’s 99-day EMA).
Overall, the major supports to look out for include $0.5528, $0.5121 and $0.4542.
The resistance to watch includes $0.5934, $0.6437 and $0.7251.
Overall, these new trends show a shift in hacker tactics. By hijacking popular channels with large amounts of followers, malicious actors can reach thousands or even millions of victims in one fell swoop.
With the increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies like XRP scammers are now taking advantage of the hype around the market to lure people in.
As the number of cyberattacks on social media platforms like X and YouTube continues to grow, the importance of vigilance in the crypto space continues to become clearer.
Just as these social networks work to improve security, users themselves must refrain from clicking unfamiliar links and become wary of claims of unrealistic returns.
Disclaimer: Voice of Crypto aims to deliver accurate and up-to-date information, but it will not be responsible for any missing facts or inaccurate information. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile financial assets, so research and make your own financial decisions.