So it was a Wednesday morning.
I'm rolling up to my office a little bit later than usual.
I just wrapped up a nice breakfast and I'm sitting down at my computer.
So there I am, scrolling through my email, and I just happened to check YouTube comments.
And then I see it.
Oh no, not another channel hack.
Oh, no.
Antonio, you're gonna want to check this out.
Why is armor s now named tesla?
Now, my first thoughts were, Elon, come on, wasn't the acquisition of Twitter enough for
you?
Is Elon Musk moving into the men's lifestyle space?
Nope.
We were hacked by scammers who had actually hacked already multiple YouTube channels they're
believed to be out of Russia.
And their big thing was, yeah, send us some bitcoin and we'll get you a 500% return on
your investment in 48 hours.
Sounds legit, right?
But seriously, Gents, we were hacked.
And I have to admit that I immediately, as soon as I saw it happen, fell into panic mode.
I remember the moment time slow down, my vision narrowed.
I felt like I had to do something, but I was frozen because I didn't know what to do.
I was experiencing all of this for about 90 seconds, and then my training kicked in.
So what happened next?
How did we deal with and overcome the Tesla hack in just a couple of hours?
In fact, I have to say that day actually became a lot better, relatively speaking.
So the full story of how we were hacked and came out the other side stronger.
Gentlemen, that's the subject of today's video.
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Prelude, the calm before the storm.
So I've been making YouTube videos for over a decade.
In the first few years it was just me and my wife editing and uploading every single
video.
But in about 2014, I made my first hire.
I brought in a video editor.
Now this was a huge help, but quickly we discovered that him sending us the videos and then uploading
them was an extra step that we didn't want to worry about.
And so we gave Thomas access to the back end of our channel.
Now this really streamlined the process and for the next few years, it was us three that
had access to the back end of the channel.
But in 2016, 2017 we started experiencing a lot of growth.
Over the next few years, we brought in two additional video editors.
We brought on Social Media Manager, we brought on a YouTube manager, ivan brought somebody
in who focuses in on thumbnails alone.
In addition, I brought on YouTube consultants who asked for access to the back end of our
channel so that they could actually go in there and look at the analytics and give us
informed decisions.
So it's safe to say there was a point that we actually had ten people who had access
to the back end of our channel.
And in case you're not familiar with the back end of YouTube, there are multiple levels
of access.
Now Viewer is the lowest level of access.
Editors could edit videos, but they can't delete.
Next up, we got communication managers and they can actually engage and answer people
in the comments.
Next up, we've got managers.
They've got a lot of power they can go through and ban people.
And finally we've got owners.
You have the primary owner and you have just other owner, but owners can pretty much do
anything on the channel.
The primary owner though, in this case is the person that has complete control and he's
the only person that can actually delete the channel.
So now let's jump to February 15, 2020.
312 40 09:00 A.m.
To be exact.
So at this exact time, one of our Realmen Real Style Manager email accounts was hacked.
Now wait a minute, how did a hacked email lead to a hacked YouTube channel?
Now I mentioned earlier that that Tesla group, they're based out of Russia, but this hack
actually looked like it originated out of the Philippines.
In any case, the hackers, about 6 hours later at 06:40 A.m., they went ahead and they gained
access again and they changed the password.
At this point now my video editor wasn't working and we were trying to figure out how in the
world did they get access to his email.
Now there are a number of different phishing schemes out there.
The one we believe he fell for is basically it looked like a legitimate email coming from
what looks to be a sponsor that we worked with in the past.
Well, guess what?
It was a phishing email.
And when he clicked on it, they downloaded something onto his computer.
We're not sure exactly when this happened, but it was something that they were able to
plant virus onto his computer that allowed them to be able to see and see his keystrokes,
copy that information, and then access his email.
Now, these hackers move fast because they had already unlisted all of our videos and
uploaded the video that was promoting the scam.
Now, at the time my channel is getting hacked, I am at home just having a nice breakfast
with my family, oblivious to what's going on.
In any case, at about 08:22 A.m.
Is when I start to see the first comments, and these have been going on for already about
30 minutes.
People are like, what's going on with your channel?
Antonio?
We received emails, and so thank you for everyone that reached out and let us know that our
channel had been hacked.
You guys were one of those guys.
Let us know in the comments.
I'm going to get you a challenge going.
If you like this video, if you're enjoying this type of content, do me a favor and smash
the like button.
Actually helps the algorithm, helps more people find this video.
So now let's talk about those first couple of minutes.
I talked about my vision narrowing.
I talked about freezing.
I talked about all of a sudden, yeah, you're in that panic mode, guys, that happens to
everybody.
And it definitely happened to me.
So I immediately logged in and I was, okay, I can log in from my Master account.
I saw the video, I went in there and I hit delete.
After that, for the next 30 seconds, I'm just sitting there frozen, thinking, trying to
come up with ideas what could have happened, what's going on?
Is this a joke?
It's like you just have all of these things going through your mind.
But by minute two, thankfully, my training kicked in.
So if you know anything about me, I served in the United States Marine Corps, but I was
an adjutant with an infantry battalion.
And one of the things I had to get really good at was dealing with emergencies.
You need to be able to handle a crisis, and the first thing you want to do is get open
lines of communication with everyone that's involved.
So that's what I did.
I sent immediately a company email.
Thank goodness for shortcuts.
I just type in Armors Team and it automatically fills in.
I just said, Everybody jump on zoom.
This is an emergency.
We've been hacked.
Now, thank goodness this was during normal work hours, and we've got an expectation within
the company that, hey, you need to be checking your email every 60 minutes.
Well, guess what?
Within ten minutes, I had everybody in that room that I needed.
First up, I had Yuri, my tech manager, my security guy based out of Ukraine.
Next up, I had my YouTube manager, Jane, based out of the Philippines, and right with her,
I had Jamie, my personal assistant and social media manager.
Now, over the next hour, we eventually had everyone on the team jump into that room,
which was great because we had everyone change their passwords.
That being said, it was having those three key people in that meeting, and all of a sudden,
we just started letting go of information.
Does anyone know what happened?
When did it happen?
How did we notice it?
Yuri brought up, okay, we need to look at who has access, and we need to revoke access
to as many people as possible unless they are critical.
So immediately we went from having eight managers in the back end to having only two, and that
includes the owner.
Next up, Yurian went through and checked everyone with their email, their armor email.
He's like, hey, did anyone get hacked on their emails?
So we started reaching out to everybody on the team.
Now, this next part was key.
We were saying, hey, what do we do?
What actions can we take?
How are we going to get a hold of somebody at YouTube to help us unscrew this situation?
And this is where Jamie and Jane shone right through.
They're watching YouTube.
They knew what was going on.
And apparently, Alex Costa, his channel, was hacked just a few weeks before.
And they're like, hey, this happened to Alex.
And I'm like, well, wait a minute.
Let's send Alex an email.
I quickly check my phone.
I've got Alex's phone number, so I send him an immediate message.
Alex, man, you got to help me.
My channel's been hacked.
What actions can I take?
Within a minute, Alex, he immediately got back to me, and he's like, Antonio, this sucks.
Here is the action you need to take.
Now, at the same time, I've got Jamie over on social media.
She is tweeting out to YouTube, what's happened?
We go in and we do a quick search, and we find that there is a form.
We get into a chat message with somebody over at YouTube.
And what we saw again and again is everyone's directing us to the same form.
I filled out that form three times, making sure all the information was there.
Now, at this point, we're about an hour into the hack.
As far as we know, we have not seen any new videos uploaded, and we're just trying to
identify, okay, what else could this person do?
We noticed that all of the videos now are unlisted.
The channel's name is Tesla, and our picture is Tesla.
I could immediately change the picture.
Unfortunately, I couldn't change the name.
Apparently, when it comes to the name, of your channel, you can only change it twice
in a 14 day period.
Now, at this point, we're about an hour and 15 an hour and 20 minutes into the hack, and
Jamie brings up, hey, we need to let people know what's going on.
And I 100% agree.
So we realized the community tab was a great way to reach out to people.
We were using it as our lifeline to clearly communicate to everyone that we could on the
channel, letting them know what happened.
And I always think it's a bad move in PR if you aren't clear and transparent with people
with what's going on, because we were concerned that somebody actually would fall for the
hack.
We also posted it on a few other platforms.
And by the way, that Zoom meeting is left open the entire time.
We've got other people on the team that are all verifying that their emails have not been
hacked, except for one person.
He was offline.
He was taking a break, and he came back at 1040 and pointed out, I cannot access my email.
I've been locked out.
And sure enough, our tech manager goes over there, checks it out, he regains access, and
Yuri's able to come in and completely resets everything with that email.
Now, of course, at this point, we're communicating with him via phone, and we point out that
he has been hacked.
He acknowledges he's been hacked and that his computer has been compromised.
So he immediately goes through and he checks all of his personal accounts.
He changes all those passwords, and then we start to go through, and we're like, hey,
man, you're going to need to reformat your computer.
I'm not sure exactly how deep this thing is, where it's at, but you need to spend the next
two days fixing this situation.
I also was very clear, don't worry about your job.
This could have happened to anybody.
And I want to be really clear about this.
Gents is getting hacked doesn't mean you're stupid.
It just means you got hacked.
He doesn't even know how it happened.
I'm not sure how it happened exactly.
To be clear, this mistake did cost us money.
We looked at the number of sponsorships we had to move, the number of man hours that
went into fixing this play $25,000 mistake right here.
But the reality is, your people, if you're in a company, they're your most valuable asset.
They are what make up the company and help you reach others.
And in fact, I had three people I mentioned.
They all got bonuses out of this, and the reason being is because they performed brilliantly
under pressure.
So at this point, it's well past 10:00 a.m..
I've received feedback from YouTube that they've received my request, and in fact, I love the
fact I had somebody by name reaching out, telling me things were going to be okay.
They're looking at this, and they can see that we've already taken recontrol of the
channel, but over the next 24 hours, they're going to restore our channel back to where
it was.
Now, once I found out that a particular manager's email had been hacked, and I knew his level
of access, it was high, but it wasn't an owner or anything, all of a sudden I felt so much
better because I realized, okay, what this person was able to do and what this hacker
wasn't able to do.
And knowing this information, all of a sudden I was able to continue on with my day.
Because I mentioned earlier that I actually had a pretty good day.
I did.
I had three Masterminds set up with over 30 different business owners that we had been
running again and again.
And I didn't want to cancel those.
I facilitate those masterminds.
And I said, you know what, I got to get my mind off of this.
I've got a team that can handle this as it is right now.
And I'm going to go into these Masterminds and I'm very happy I did.
One of these Masterminds is with twelve other YouTubers, YouTubers of pretty good sized
YouTubers I've known for years.
One of them is Pat Flynn.
He became famous for smart, passive income, but big pocket monsters.
Where he's killing it now on YouTube.
Come to find out, Pat had been hacked by the same scammers Tesla just a few months before.
And so this became the topic of the entire Mastermind talking about security hacking.
But Pat brought up one important point.
He's like, hey, your owner account wasn't hacked, it was just a manager.
And yes, they unlisted everything, but we just went through manually and made things
live again.
You can restore your channel in the time that you're waiting for YouTube to take action.
You could actually restore it yourself.
Now this was key.
For some reason, I hadn't thought about this.
I thought that actually YouTube had taken my channel down.
And you don't want to break anything.
You're like, oh man, I want to be careful here.
I want YouTube to go in to restore it to like it was.
But the reality is they didn't end up doing that till Friday.
And because of Pat's advice, we started that very early afternoon.
I immediately sent a message to Jane, to Jamie, and we went through every single video, made
sure it was clear, and started to upload them.
The point is, we understood we had so much more control of the situation because again,
of a loose relationship, somebody I didn't even know whose channel was hacked, was giving
us great advice and we were able to take and run with it quickly.
As many of you guys know, we've got well over 2000 videos on this channel.
So for the people on my team, they spent the next couple of days going through and looking
at every video and hitting publish, uploading it.
We went through and restored the entire channel.
There were certain things that we couldn't restore.
Our verification badge was gone.
The name of the channel was still Tesla, but YouTube was able to fix that for us.
Within 24 hours, we got it changed back to R Mors.
For some reason, I couldn't change it to real men, real style.
But by two days after the incident, we were back to Realmen Real Style, and our verification
badge had been brought back.
So what's the silver lining on all this?
Well, I have to say that you really got to see how people would immediately come to your
aid if you needed it.
Alex Costa I mean, the guy was right there responding to my text, and I just really appreciate
him.
My friend Pat Flynn giving me that information I needed to know right there in that mastermind.
And it goes without saying, we improved our procedures.
So we did what's known as an after action report.
Anyone that served in the military probably knows what these are.
After action reports.
Ars basically, after a serious incident, you go through and you examine what happened,
and then you look at ways that you can set up systems so it doesn't happen again.
And at the end of the day, it could have been so much worse.
They could have gotten access to my owner account.
They could have redirected where money was coming from the channel.
They could have actually had the channel longer.
Maybe I was on vacation or no one would have noticed.
I know a lot of YouTubers that are a lot smaller.
Maybe they take a break from their channel and yeah, so it could have been so much worse.
And talking about it being worse, gents, you got to check out this video right here.
Actually had my personal identity stolen.
What am I talking about?
Guys, check this video out right here.
I go into details and yeah, another story of Antonio.
Yeah, not being so smart.
There's probably a lot of stories out there like that.
But guys, check it out.
Good video right here.