Vevo’s YouTube channels hacked – Adele, Taylor Swift, Drake and Shakira’s accounts taken over and Despacito music video deleted
Vevo's YouTube account has been hacked to delete Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee's Despacito music video, the most-viewed clip on the platform.
Vevo's YouTube channels have been hacked to delete Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee's Despacito music video, the most-viewed clip on the platform.
The Spanish-language hit, which has been viewed over 5 billion times, first had its video's title changed by cyberattackers, before it completely vanished from the Google-owned platform, according to The Hacker News.
The massively popular clip's title was also reportedly changed as was its thumbnail image.
The hack seems to be part of a bigger breach affecting several Vevo YouTube channels, including those belonging to Drake, Taylor Swift, Adele Chris Brown, Shakira, and Maroon 5.
A hacker using the online moniker of Kuroi'SH claimed responsibility for the breach in a series of tweets, revealing that he also hacked rapper Post Malone, and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.
A YouTube spokesperson told The Sun the following in a statement: “After seeing unusual upload activity on a handful of VEVO channels, we worked quickly with our partner to disable access while they investigate the issue.”
"Vevo can confirm that a number of videos in its catalogue were subject to a security breach today, which has now been contained," a Vevo spokesman told The Sun.
"We are working to reinstate all videos affected and our catalogue to be restored to full working order. We are continuing to investigate the source of the breach."
Kuroi'SH also tweeted that he would hack NASA, Jake Paul and Logan Paul "if we didn't hit 40,000 followers this day".
We've reached out to Vevo and YouTube, and will update this article with their respective responses.
Most of the affected music videos have had their titles changed to include "hacked by Kuroi'Sh & Prosox".
They have also added the caption "Free Palestine" to some clips.
The hacker Kuroi'SH is also believed to have been behind a breach of Google Brazil last year, which saw the site defaced for more than 30 minutes.
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Another Twitter account (@RealKuroiSHH) attributed to the same hacker also tweeted a link to Adele's Vevo channel on YouTube, along with the hashtag "#hacked".
That account's bio claims Kuroi'SH is an "official owner" of Poodle Corp, a notorious hacking group thought to have been behind the 2016 cyberattack on mobile game Pokémon Go.
Last month, the group's founding member, 20-year-old Zachary Buchta, was sentenced to three months in prison for his role in hacking thousands of company websites around the world and harassing unsuspecting people.
Vevo, which counts Google and YouTube's parent company Alphabet as an investor, previously suffered a massive breach in September – which saw more than 3 terabytes worth of the video platform's internal files leaked online.
The Our Mine hacker squad – bets known for hijacking Mark Zuckerberg and Netflix's Twitter accounts – claimed responsibility for that attack.
IT security specialist Mark James told The Sun that the cyberattack could potentially affect regular YouTube users alongside the artists who had their accounts hacked.
James, who works for anti-virus software-maker ESET, said: "the problem with these types of hacks is the potential for damage caused. For YouTube it’s a brand and PR issue. For the artists it’s the personal damage of their brand being used for nefarious purposes.
"Some YouTube videos collect hundreds of thousands or indeed millions of views. The ability to push information to all those viewers is massive and in some cases we could even see actions to trick the user into going to websites or following [a] link."
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