Dota 2 YouTube Hack Promotes Solana Meme Coin Scam, PGL Hijacked for Fake Bitcoin Giveaway
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- Account compromise: The official YouTube channel for the popular game Dota 2 was briefly compromised to promote a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme.
- Fraudulent promotion: Hackers used the channel to run a fake livestream promoting a newly created Solana-based meme coin named "dota2coin."
- Wider impact: Shortly after, the YouTube channel for PGL, a major Valve-sanctioned esports organizer, was also hijacked to broadcast a fake Bitcoin giveaway scam.
The official YouTube channel for Valve's immensely popular multiplayer online battle arena game, Dota 2, was temporarily compromised in a security breach. The attackers hijacked the account to broadcast a fraudulent livestream titled "Dota 2 Launch Official Meme Coin | Hurry Up."Â
The incident spread to another prominent channel in the esports community, PGL, a Romanian esports organizer that hosts Valve-sanctioned Dota 2 tournaments. The PGL channel was also compromised to stream a fake Bitcoin giveaway.
The Solana Meme Coin Scam Details
This incident is the latest example of a high-profile YouTube account hijacking used to exploit a large audience for financial gain through cryptocurrency scams. The unauthorized content was removed, but not before being documented by users on social media platforms like Reddit.
The core of the attack was the promotion of a newly created Solana meme coin scam, reports say. The fraudulent stream directed gaming viewers to a token on the Pump.fun platform named "dota2coin."Â
On-chain analysis indicated the token was created just hours before the hack, with a single wallet holding over 98% of the total supply—a common characteristic of pump-and-dump schemes.Â
This type of crypto fraud relies on creating hype through a trusted channel to artificially inflate a token's value before the creators sell off their holdings, causing the price to crash and leaving investors with worthless assets.
Meanwhile, a few hundred thousand users in the U.S. had reported issues with YouTube around 8 p.m. ET on Wednesday, according to Downdetector. Thousands of outages were also reported in the U.K., Canada, and Australia. On the same day, YouTube announced that it had fixed the issue.
A Persistent Cybersecurity Threat Vector
This Dota 2 YouTube hack is part of a recurring pattern where threat actors target verified channels with large subscriber bases. These events underscore the persistent vulnerability of major online platforms to social engineering and account takeovers.Â
Similar attacks have been used since 2020, often involving phishing attempts disguised as sponsorship offers to gain access to creator accounts and promote fraudulent crypto giveaways.
In June, a major Google Cloud and Cloudflare outage impacted YouTube and other leading tech services. In February, Valve removed a Trojan-infested game from Steam.
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