How I got hacked and got my accounts back

[Hyper]

As some of yall have heard, I got hacked and the hacker almost got to every point of my digital infrastructure. I was a former sysadmin for MFGG and I still have credentials so that was revoked just to be extra safe.

This was originally a script for my YouTube channel but I decided to put it here instead because it's too focused on the event:
Since it is a MASSIVE wall of text, I just pasted my Google Docs of the incident to here.

I really appreciate your time listening to my experiences. I do want to give some pointers on how to keep yourself safe and prepare yourself in event of being hacked:

1. In this day of age, you cannot trust even your closest friends on social media. Because you never know if they got hacked. There are some ways to determine if it’s them like a secret phrase you disclose outside the chat or ask them a question only they know about you. If that doesn’t work or your friends don't know much about you. The number 1 rule of thumb is to never touch ANY files or any links you don’t recognize. If you have to, prepare your Discord account in a sandboxed environment like a virtual machine, make sure you have your backups like your passkeys ready, and do it from there.
   
2. Have a habit to log out frequently. Especially on systems that are more vulnerable like Windows. The less the active session you have, the less likely the hacker is able to hijack your accounts
   
3. Do not use any web browser passwords. It is best to have an offline password manager only on your phone and/or write it down in a notebook if you can keep it secure. Even though it is logged in, the password database and encryption key are typically laid around in your system that can be easily decrypted and it's not too much saving your password as a txt file.
   
4. It is best to have a YouTube channel tied to your Google account so that you can get the ball rolling by contacting YouTube Support on Twitter/X. Be sure to remember your YouTube account’s channel ID, name, and the URL to your latest videos. The more details you have, the more leverage you have to prove ownership.
   
5. If you have any old device sitting there collecting dust, register your Google account in it and keep it offline, the more old devices you have the better. Especially when your Google account got hacked, keeping it offline will prevent your Google account being synced and updated to the settings the hacker placed. Remember the security code from your Google account settings and remember the date/time. This will be your golden ticket to regain access to your hacked Google account when you’re communicating with YouTube support.
   
6. Always have multiple accounts as backups, never put all login in one basket (email). If your email account gets hacked, you’ll be in a worse position. And because of how Google handles my data, I cannot trust them to secure my most sensitive accounts anymore. I moved to Proton mail for that reason. I haven’t contacted Proton yet and hopefully I don’t have to end up in that point but from what I’ve heard they’re more proactive on protecting their consumers, especially paid customers.
   
7. If you have custom voicemail greetings on your phone, delete that and set that to default voicemail greetings. The reason why is that the hacker can utilize that to train AI and use it to impersonate you. In addition, if you receive unknown number calls, ignore them. If you have to answer, keep the silence and don’t even greet "hello".
   

Anyways, it was partially my fault not knowing the actual threat and letting my guard down for a moment. Please be careful out there, especially on Discord when it is a primary breeding grounds for hackers. Feel free to leave a comment below for any tips, your story/experience being hacked. I will try to read them and learn from yall as well.

[mrpin355]

Welcome back! It was so scary reading the account of the situation. I remember my debit card having fraudulent purchases slip under my watch and it wasn't nice realizing it until I got my money back, but to have all of your accounts compromised and one nuked forever is another story.

I'm actually surprised the reason was that you got conned. Usually, the practice of phishing links seem outdated as victims can now get hacked out of the blue by a hacker ring purchasing their compromised info from a black market without them knowing anything, probably because they were oblivious enough to download anything without double checking, though you did mention that VirusTotal didn't even work and it's scary how that slipped by. 

That was my first assumption when your compromised account sent me a message and I don't blame you about falling for it, it seemed convincing at first but the moment they mentioned something about "minecraft builder has been designing a city" along the lines, I instantly let my guard up which is ironic considering your situation. Hope this sets a precedent to be even more ruthless and keep asking out of the person and their motives when they request you, this has been established principle for a while now; https://nohello.club/. A real friend would never start a conversation like that!

Also, yeah, Google isn't the best to be trusted with longevity. Usually, I use it for throwaways and use a different email domain for my main accounts.

Bonus: a doodle I made on the day you got hacked as a jab to the hacker because I wasn't having any of it.

[Louis Paul]

I sympathize with you @Hyper, this can happen to anyone, nowadays not even Linux is safe from malware, a week ago over 400 packages on the Arch Linux AUR were compromised, fortunately I didn't install or update the compromised packages on this period. One thing I do is to configure my browser to delete all website and session data when closing it.

On a more positive note, I liked playing your fangames when I was younger, my favorites were Highway Trouble and Typical Mario Game.

Signature reserved for future use

[VinnyVideo]

Sorry to hear about that. Getting a bunch of accounts hacked would be the polar opposite of fun. I'm glad you've been able to recover most of your accounts.

And thanks for sharing some security tips. I'm pretty careful about my online security, but there are a few adjustments I might want to make.

Discord's security has as many holes as a block of Swiss cheese. I can think of at least four or five different MFGG friends who've had their accounts compromised in the past year or so.

I urge extreme caution when clicking on any links to external sites shared on Discord. When I get a sketchy link from a friend, or a message that doesn't feel right, I ask my friend to message me on another platform (like MFGG) and provide some piece of nonpublic information that only a real friend would know. For example, if it was a former classmate, I might ask them what class we took together. These steps might not be sufficient to determine if an account hasn't been compromised, but in my experience, asking these questions will make a scammer immediately end the conversation, thus confirming that the account has been compromised.

I always use the browser version of Discord. Do you think for a Windows user, the desktop version is safer than the browser version, or vice versa? Do you think any browser is less bad than the others when it comes to protecting against this kind of attack?

Course clear! You got a card.