#ginichimaru

First off, the Robinhood channel you mentioned isn’t part of the botnet. Trust me, I checked.

As for the botnet’s point, I have no idea what it’s for at the moment. It isn’t for ad revenue, as none of their videos have ads on them. And I couldn’t find a link on Black Bart’s channels that could potentially distribute malware. The crypto mining thing could be the reason, but it’s a really weird way to farm.

Its namesake comes from a now-deleted channel called Black Bart/Heartseeker Lucian), whose mascot (?) depicted Bart Simpson in black clothing (which I flipped upside down for my icon). This long gone channel seems to be where the botnet began, as some of the botnet’s videos are marked with the hashtag “#watchingblackbart”.

The Black Bart botnet comes from Vietnam, given the nationalities of the channels involved and a leaked screenshot from a virtual machine used by its owner. It started off using newly-created channels for its videos, and still does on rare occasions. But I guess YouTube noticed and blocked it for the most part.

Now, the botnet usually gets their videos on YouTube by hijacking Vietnamese channels and posting the compilations a while after their last (normal) video. This is a good example of what I’m talking about:

Very rarely, a gaming channel outside of Vietnam will be hijacked by the botnet. But it’s only happened twice so far. I’m guessing the way they get the channels is through fake “YouTube Zenni” programs themed after WinRAR and GTA V that were shown in the leaked screenshot.