How Crypto hackers took over channel of top African YouTuber with 1.2m followers

He is reputed as one of the continent’s biggest YouTubers sharing cross-continental content aimed at putting out a positive aspect of Africa and Africans within the continent.

Then the hackers struck.

His page first went blank and the name changed from “Wode Maya” to “Microstrategy.”

Before long, it was confirmed with the unusual activity on the channel that it had actually been hacked.

The new owners started multiple live streaming with the aim of soliciting for funds in a crypto currency scheme. At GhanaWeb’s last check, there were five such streams running concurrently.

Meanwhile, all of Wode Maya’s videos had gone off the page even though the page information remained intact – page created in 2013 with over 193 million views.

A robust social media campaign started almost immediately with people especially on Twitter tagging YouTube and YouTube Support to help Wode Maya to reclaim his account.

After some hours, it turned out that the channel had been taken down entirely. All previous links when clicked return a message: “Video Unavailable. This video is private.”

Also, the page when searched on YouTube also returns zero result.

The vlogger, real name Berthold Winkler, has yet to publicly comment on the development.