One of the features of Twitch is donations, where viewers can donate money to their favorite streamer to support them financially. However, it seems that this feature could have actually been used by hackers to help them launder money from stolen credit cards.
This is according to reports from MEE and Gamegar where it was discovered that over in the Turkish market, hackers used stolen credit cards to purchase Bits. These Bits would then be donated to Twitch streamers with whom they negotiated deals with. Once the donations were received, the streamers would keep 20% of the donations and refund 80% to the hackers to different bank accounts, thus laundering the money.
Hala devam ediyor teklifler gelmeye. Yeteri kadar iyi bir yayıncı değilim herhalde sadece %20 bırakıyorlar bana :( #temiztwitch pic.twitter.com/S4IFUgcisn
— Grimnax (@grimnax) October 29, 2021
It has been estimated that through this scheme, the hackers managed to launder as much as $9.8 million through 2,400 Turkish streamers in the past two years. This came to light after several Turkish streamers shared Discord messages on Twitter in which they revealed that the hackers had reached out to them to try and convince them to be part of this deal.
Twitch has also since stated that they have since taken action against more than 150 of partners for “abuse of our monetisation tools” and are also working with streamers who have reached out to them.
Filed in . Read more about Hack, Legal, Security and Twitch. Source: kotaku