Unknown persons delete "Prestupnosti.NET" YouTube channel and editor-in-chief's Facebook account
Unknown persons gained access to the personal Facebook page of Mykolaiv online media "Prestupnosti.NET" editor-in-chief Anatoly Chubachenko and deleted it. In addition, attackers took over and deleted the media outlet's YouTube channel. The editors believe that this is all the work of russian special services or russian hackers.
Anatoly Chubachenko told the IMI representative in Mykolaiv region about this.
On the morning of July 10, Anatoliy Chubachenko discovered that an interview recording which had been posted the day before was missing from the "Prestupnosti.NET" website. He saw that the publication's YouTube channel had been deleted by someone. At the same time, it turned out that he had lost access to his own Facebook page, which was later deleted.
"In the morning, I started working and discovered that the website was missing a video of an interview from our YouTube channel, which we had posted on the website a day earlier. It said that the channel had been deleted. I looked into this and ralized that I no longer had access to the email that was tied to this channel. While I was trying to figure out how it all happened, I started getting emails on my personal inbox which said that first the phone number that was linked to my Facebook account changed, then my email changed, then my email was deleted and my password was changed. I lost any way to log in to my Facebook account, and literally a few minutes later my colleagues began to text me, saying that my account was not available, that is, it did not exist, it had also been deleted,” the editor-in-chief said.
The editors do not understand how this could happen. Email and Facebook accounts had two-factor authentication. In addition, the email to which the YouTube account was linked was not linked to his phone.
"That is, I had a password, but there was a two-factor authentication process. And it's exactly the same with Facebook, we still can't figure out how it happened that they were able to access my Facebook account without going through the two-factor authentication that had been set up," he said.
The editors wrote to the support service on both YouTube and Facebook.
"I received a response from YouTube that they would review it within two days, maybe more. As for Facebook, there is no such communication format, so we have to use all the possibilities we had, all that they have, to restore access to the account, but none of them have worked so far. We have no way of resolving the issue, because the attackers simply changed all the emails from the inside, and all the codes for changing the password and restoring access are coming to those emails that had been listed by the attackers," said Anatoliy Chubachenko.
He himself and the media outlet's staff believe that this is all the work of russian special services or russian hackers. He noted that the attackers have tied the hacked Facebook account and YouTube channel to russian email addresses.
"We believe there is a high probability of it having been done by russian special services or russian hackers, because in my case, they listed russian e-mails such as 'mail.ru,' which is not used in Ukraine. This can be explained by the fact that the YouTube channel had so many videos about captured russian soldiers, the Ukrainian army destroying russian equipment, there were a lot of views – some videos got 2 million. And the Facebook account was also hacked, probably because I am the editor-in-chief of a media outlet that actively supports Ukraine and debunks russian fakes in every possible way. We have a large audience. Therefore, this is basically the only explanation for who would feel the need to hack the Facebook account and the email at such a time," Chubachenko said.
Editor-in-chief is asking for help with contacting Facebook and YouTube representatives directly, as he is afraid that they may lose their YouTube channel, which they have been developing for 10 years, and their Facebook page altogether.
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