Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee's hit single 'Despacito' has returned to YouTube so no need to fear. For those who didn't know, 'Despacito' amongst some other hit songs on Vevo YouTube channels, were hacked and taken off of the site. This came just a few days after the song became the first ever video on YouTube to reach five billion views according to the Independent website.
If you were to search for one of these music videos (that included artists like Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, and Drake) that had been hacked, you would see that the cover image was of men in masks holding guns and facing them towards the camera.
These videos not only had the same picture but the same caption that read "Free Palestine." It's not clear as to why this was done, but that doesn't mean we can't speculate about it.
Who were the hackers?
Although we're not sure if these are their real names, the hackers called themselves Prosox and Kuroi'sh. Along with the caption of "Free Palestine", there were a multitude of other messages as well. The YouTube channel Vevo and affiliate channels with these videos had them taken off temporarily to fix these issues.
The 'Despacito' video has since been republished on these channels but these hackers haven't been found. YouTube and Vevo are working together to investigate the source of this breach but have yet to release any new information on the matter.
The other affected videos are slowly being re-uploaded day by day but the question remains, how did they pull this off?
How did they pull this off?
According to BBC, a cyber-security expert Prof Alan Woodward of Surrey University said that it was highly unlikely that the hackers were able to gain access easily. "To upload and alter video content with code you should require an authorisation token" he said.
"So, either this hacker has found a way around that need for authorisation, or they are being economical with the facts, or they obtained the permissions in some other way."
YouTube isn't sure of how they could've done this, nor is anybody else really. The whole situation seems odd and it became even weirder when one of the hackers had posted "It's just for fun, I just use the script 'youtube-change-title-video' and I write 'hacked'."
For someone to get a kick out of hacking these music videos seems like a peculiar hobby to have but the creepy part of it all is why they chose to use a picture of masked shooters. What does this mean? Is it a subliminal message? This is not clear, but for now, we'll have to wait and see what new information will arise.
