A group of cyber pranksters defaced an array of some of the most popular YouTube music videos by changing titles and thumbnail images on the singer's VEVO accounts.
Hackers calling themselves “Prosox” and “Kuroi'SH,” targeted high profile videos including those by Katy Perry, Shakira, Drake, Selena Gomez, Adele, Taylor Swift and the most-viewed YouTube video of all time, Luis Fonsi's “Despacito,” featuring Daddy Yankee, according to an April 10 ESET blog post.
The pranksters changed the “Despacito” video's thumbnail to an image of masked robbers from TV heist drama “La Casa de Papel” (also known as “Money Heist”) and included a message underneath saying “Free Palestine” and used similar images and messaging for other videos.
It is unclear whether or not the hackers found a vulnerability in the YouTube platform or why they only tampered with VEVO music videos, but one of the hackers said the defacement wasn't intended to be malicious.
“It's just for fun I just use script ‘youtube-change-title-video' and I write ‘hacked,'” one of the reported hackers tweeted from the ProsoxW3b Twitter account.
