MichaelHendriks
patreon
I was hacked (now almost recovered)
🕑 Added 2022-12-06 17:32:35 +0000 UTCI'm too out of energy to type anything comprehensable, but I quickly wante to share that I have regained access to my youtube account, and all videos seem fully intact. The best outcome possible, which I couldn't dare to hope for
It's not fully over yet, it's unclear if my editing laptop is still infected or not, so i'll keep it disconnected from internet for now (I copied my video files, editing projects, save games and such to an external USB harddisk, then did a full clean re-install from windows, then reconnected the USB harddisk to copy my videos/projects back onto the laptop. It's unclear to me if it's possible if a malicious script can copy itself to a usb disk, and upon plugging in into another device, it can "wake up" and copy itself and run itself onto a different device, all unnoticed. I can't test it out, because youtube and google are one account. Anyway, a problem to solve later.
I think I will just release the scheduled video tomorrow on youtube, but I don't have anything new to upload for early access. I will try to get something up in a few days, I want to stay/get back in the flow as best as possible. But first, sleep.
Thanks again for all your comments and support. It's truly heartwarming to read all your messages even though I didn't find the time to reply much :/
The remarkable speed of the recovery is almost fully thanks to a few patreon-supporters who reached out, and who happened to be able to exert some influence in the right places. You know who you are. Thank you.
Below this line nothing new:
Small update before sleep: Thanks to the help of a few patrons who just so happen to work at google, recovery seems to be progressing quite rapidly all of a sudden. So far, I got my email account back ALREADY (and updated all security), and I just filled in an extensive questionaire to review the youtube situation. With the scammers seemingly being purely focussed on the scammy crypto/tesla stream, I have good hopes of near-full recovery now. They didn't delete anything from my mailbox, and all but one video below seem to be set to private, instead of being deleted, so, depending on how much I'll be held accountable for my account breaking the guidelines under the scammers control, let's hope for the best!
Thanks everyone for the warnings and morale-boosting messages. I will post more updates as soon as I have more info, but the sun is almost rising already, so first some sleep!
(also changed post from public to patreon-only now)
Old post below, nothing new below here
Thanks for notifying me. I am an idiot and fell for a basic trick, launched an executable file named .pdf.scr
I'm locked out of my google account and youtube axccount. After 2 hours still clueless on how to get back in google, or how to get google to try a different verification method.
They got in my account, switched off 2 factor Identification without problem apparantly, then changed recovery email and put a different 2-factor-ID (a physical USB-recovery key). They seem pro's.
When I try to log in google, they ask for my last known password, then ask me to insert the physical usb-recovery key, when i decline they sent a recovery link to the new email they made, when I reject I'm out of options, and can only start the cyclus again. I have google authenticator on my phone, as well as my phone number still being the same, I think.
I can't find any options to emergency call google to block my account until it's resolved. (like with bank or creditcard emergency block phone number). Any help or ideas are appreciated.
Thanks,
Michael
PS All my video and editing data is backed up and safe. Actual video making will be delayed for an unknown time obviously though.
Comments
Casey Ford
so happy to see the channel is back up and relatively unharmed. so so stressful for you I bet, you deserve the sleep.
So glad you got (most of) the headache figured out! You mention the idea a virus could "wake up" and copy itself onto your thumb drive - I think the best option there would be to boot your infected laptop off a Linux live USB to do the file transfers. You could mount the drive and copy files you need without worrying about a virus automatically running when your PC boots. Just make sure to scan the USB drive with Malwarebytes or something similar after you do!
